


Astoria Greengrass and the Curse of Quennell Park

by PerfidiouslySnatching



Series: Astoria of Slytherin [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Astoria Greengrass's Blood Curse | Blood Malediction, BAMF Astoria Greengrass, Blood Magic, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Canon Rewrite, Carrows Reign at Hogwarts, Child Abuse, Dark Arts, Death Eater Draco Malfoy, Death Eaters, Drastoria, Enmeshment, F/F, F/M, Good Slytherins, Good Theodore Nott, Grief/Mourning, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Compliant, Hoarding Disorder, Horcruxes, Legilimency (Harry Potter), Loss of Faith, Loss of Innocence, Memory Magic, Moodypocalypse, Moral Ambiguity, Moral Dilemmas, Non-Consensual Touch (Physical), Not Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant, Obsession, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Drama, Pureblood Culture (Harry Potter), Rabastan is rated "E" for "Existing", Redeemed Draco Malfoy, Repressed Memories, Sexual Harassment, Sexual Tension, Suicide, The Carrows are rated "M" for "MMM Nope", Wandlore (Harry Potter), gothic horror, tw Physical Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:13:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 34
Words: 232,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25753396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerfidiouslySnatching/pseuds/PerfidiouslySnatching
Summary: “You know something, Astoria?” Draco mumbled, daring to play with her hair that fell from under her hat. “All this Dark magic… I think you might be a bad example for me.”“Oh, that’s it,” she said, and she drew him down into a kiss.--This is the final series installment.Book 1: Astoria Greengrass and the Muggle-Born SlytherinBook 2: Astoria Greengrass and the Haunt of AzkabanBook 3: Astoria Greengrass and the Legilimens of Hogwarts--During the war, Astoria undergoes the biggest changes of her life. She begins desperately pulling her strength from darker places -- too dark, as far as her friends are concerned. But they haven't seen what she's seen.Astoria has always gone far to protect those dear to her. If there is anything to be done about their safety, she will do it, even if it means tapping the fount of her family's age-old secret.*Updates on Saturdays.
Relationships: Alecto Carrow & Amycus Carrow, Astoria Greengrass & Aurora Sinistra, Astoria Greengrass & Ginny Weasley, Astoria Greengrass & Original Female Character(s), Astoria Greengrass & Theodore Nott, Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy, Aurora Sinistra & Severus Snape, Bartemius Crouch Jr./Aurora Sinistra, Draco Malfoy & Theodore Nott, Hestia Carrow/Original Female Character(s), Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks
Series: Astoria of Slytherin [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1462606
Comments: 254
Kudos: 72





	1. A Happy Event

**Author's Note:**

> **Please read.** Thank you so much for stopping by! This is the 4th and final book of the [series.](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1462606) This one will not make sense if this is your first visit to the series, so I strongly recommend them read in order. :) However, this info may help a bit:  
> *The POV of the first few chapters is a Muggle-born OC, Rhiannon, who was Sorted into Slytherin (chaos ensued). Her favourite teachers were Remus Lupin and Barty Crouch (who she didn't know at the time was a Death Eater).  
> *Rhiannon doesn't have a good family. She is currently staying with the Greengrass family. Astoria's mother is Estelle Ciel-Greengrass. The Greengrasses are very protective of Astoria. They do not know she has been involved with Draco Malfoy.  
> *I have tried to annotate the events in the 7 canon books almost line-by-line for a Slytherin retelling. Astoria's POV will come a few chapters later.
> 
> For those who have supported my series throughout, I cannot thank you enough. ♥  
> \---  
> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 1 - "My Hero" by Foo Fighters

One thing Rhiannon knew was that the regal Mrs Ciel-Greengrass did _not_ consider this a wedding. Two people were about to get married right in front of them, but _this_ , a wedding? Oh no.

Rhiannon and Mrs Ciel-Greengrass were two of only four non-relatives present at the wedding, having been permitted to enter the tavern after a string of security questions. The rest of the witnesses to the wedding were looking on in amusement, eating and drinking their fill by the bar counter.

The Fair Fortune was a nice, warm Wizarding pub in Scotland. The room Rhiannon had dropped her bag off in was clean and cosy, and through an enchantment set by the pub’s owner, the noise from the barroom stayed in the barroom. The patrons of the bar were the nice sort: bored, middle-aged townsfolk who seemed happy to see a wedding going on. Yet even they were a bit curious as to why anybody would get married there, in the fairy-lit room off the bar.

A certain wrinkly Auror had sworn by the place, aware of the bride and groom’s desire to keep the wedding small and simple. He was sitting diagonal from Rhiannon. It was very, very hard for her to look at him. Alastor Moody’s image was achingly familiar to her, but they didn’t know each other.

Rhiannon knew why she was lucky enough to be present at the celebration for Tonks and Professor Lupin. She had not been personally invited, because weddings had to be kept quiet in times like these. But Mrs Tonks and Mrs Ciel-Greengrass were age-old friends. Since Mrs Ciel-Greengrass had seen Nymphadora grow up, it only made sense to invite a portion of Greengrasses. The trouble, as Mrs Ciel-Greengrass explained to her friend, was that her daughter Astoria was completely out of sorts ever since Dumbledore’s murder. Astoria’s bouts of total silence concerned her parents even more than they concerned Rhiannon, so Mr Greengrass remained at the estate with Astoria and his other daughter, Daphne. Rhiannon had eagerly taken up the offer to go with Mrs Ciel-Greengrass to see Professor Lupin. They kept each other company, different personalities though they were.

Mrs Ciel-Greengrass watched the proceedings respectfully but curiously, occasionally sharing a smile with the mother of the bride. Rhiannon thought the decorations were sweet and tasteful. The point, whether Mrs Ciel-Greengrass accepted it or not, was to come together and celebrate, not to make a big show. Wizards usually didn’t have full wedding parties, although Tonks did refer to an Auror named Hestia Jones as her witch of honour. Every time someone asked for Hestia, Rhiannon’s heart did a little twirl. It was impossible not to think of her girlfriend, Hestia Carrow. Rhiannon worried greatly for her. Her Hestia was no Auror at all. In fact, she lived with two Death Eaters.

The old celebrant of the wedding began reading all sorts of matrimonial lines, but nothing he said could add up to the love written all over the couple’s faces. Tonks had picked a flattering mauve for her hair colour as opposed to sporting her favourite bright pink. Rhiannon admired her white and silver gown and Professor Lupin’s spiffy dress robes. It was probably the only occasion where Tonks would be caught wearing a dress, and the only time Professor Lupin’s clothes were not scruffy. It was funny and touching at the same time.

Professor Lupin and Tonks joined hands as the celebrant cast a glittering spell over them, and sparkling stars fell upon them. Tonks couldn’t help herself after they were declared husband and wife; she picked up a magical star from the back of her hand and put it right on Professor Lupin’s nose before kissing him. Rhiannon wiped her eyes. To see them truly happy in this war filled her whole heart. The patrons at the bar joined in to applaud the couple, many of them having craned their necks to see into the room.

Tonks’s parents and Hestia Jones promptly set the room for the reception. Again, Mrs Ciel-Greengrass wore the curious look that Rhiannon found so pretentious; there was only one large table for the nine people present. In the centre was a small bouquet of magical flowers, which shimmered silver and magenta. A hearty meal was soon ready on their golden plates. The cake, supposedly, was for later.

Rhiannon wasn’t feeling quite herself, even though the food was good. Usually, meal times were her favourite excuse to talk about anything and everything, but she was the youngest person there by quite a margin. Tonks was actually the closest in age to her, but Rhiannon thought that anything she might say would be daft. The woman just got married, after all. It was very special. Everyone wanted to talk to the couple anyway. Rhiannon ate her potatoes and did her best to avoid Alastor Moody’s magical eye, which seemed to keep falling on her.

“What was your name again, young lady?” asked Mr Lyall Lupin, an ageing wizard with a huge, bushy beard.

She swallowed her food quickly, “Oh, erm, Rhiannon, sir. Rhiannon Clarke.”

“You don’t say!” said Mr Lupin suddenly. “The Slytherin!”

 _The_ Slytherin. If only she really was the Slytherin poster-child, maybe things would be different in the world. There wouldn’t be Slytherins like Voldemort running amok.

“She was a very good student, Dad,” Professor Lupin said, and Rhiannon flushed.

She had been his student twice. Once, he was actually teaching at Hogwarts, and the other time he had been hired to teach Patronuses to Rhiannon and the Greengrass sisters. As it turned out, Professor Lupin, Tonks, and Rhiannon all had the same wolf Patronus, though he was the only one ashamed of its form. He usually shunned any notion that he could have a positive effect on other people. Not this time, though. This time, he really accepted that Tonks loved him with all her heart, and that Rhiannon would have been disconsolate if she could not see them on this happy occasion.

Professor Lupin and Tonks’s first dance was to “The Feeling Follows Me,” a sentimental power ballad by The Weird Sisters. Tonks tripped on her dress whilst dancing, and Professor Lupin smiled in a way that meant he was waiting for it to happen. They were one of those couples that looked good together no matter what.

“That’s very nice, isn’t it?” Mrs Ciel-Greengrass whispered to Rhiannon, finally convinced. “I didn’t get to pick my first dance with Adam. It was determined by Arithmancy.”

Tonks kept more music coming, and her parents joined them in the open space to dance. Rhiannon hadn’t expected dancing at a wedding this small, but the parents of the bride were doing some sort of disco abomination.

“Do you dance, Mr Lupin?” Mrs Ciel-Greengrass asked politely, and the wizard accidentally spilt Firewhiskey into his beard.

Any number of things could have convinced Mr Lupin to accept –– her eminent name, her beauty, or even her dulcet French accent. They were soon with the other dancers. Rhiannon fixed her eyes on her butterbeer and wondered when the cake would be revealed. Alastor Moody and Hestia Jones were deep in conversation. She hoped that it would stay that way. Six people couldn’t dance for that long, right?

“I thought that was mine,” growled Alastor Moody.

Goose pimples prickled Rhiannon’s arms. The voice that had once been so comforting and welcome to her was now unapproachable. She steadied the stein in her hands and cleared her throat.

“This?” she said stupidly, pulling a small piece of framed but broken glass out of her robes. “I’m sorry.”

The old Auror’s bright blue eye fixed on the glass then whirled all over.

“Hell, that thing didn’t do me any good,” he said. “Why do you think I didn’t want it back? But if you’re going to sneak off with something, why didn’t you nab a better piece?”

Hestia Jones’s attention was caught at the word “sneak,” and Rhiannon tried not to freeze up. She hadn’t stolen the item at all, really.

“This piece was broken off when, erm, stuff was getting cleaned up. We, er, call it the Foe-Shard, actually, since it was small. I –– I split it with my girlfriend, so it’s even smaller.”

Alastor Moody raised his eyebrows, and the lines on his forehead could have been ridges in desert sand. Rhiannon wasn’t sure which part he was giving her that look for. That she had gone through the rubbish? That she had nicknamed the object? If he had been a Muggle, he might have given her that look for saying “girlfriend.”

“More power to your elbow,” Moody said, clapping a hand on his knee and turning back to Hestia Jones.

Rhiannon slipped the Foe-Shard back into her pocket and exhaled. That hadn’t been so bad in the scope of things, though all of the little hairs on her arms were still standing up. To distract herself, she started to eavesdrop on Mrs Ciel-Greengrass’s conversation, and at once, the woman’s reason for dancing with the old widower was clear. She was asking Mr Lupin about the ghost that was haunting her estate.

“I’m afraid my expertise lies with the non-human supernatural,” said the wizard shyly, his moustache wiggling. “But he walks, you said, and is tinged with colour? That is most peculiar! Poltergeists can be solid in form, but I’ve never known any apparition except boggarts to walk. Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but could he be a boggart appearing as a ghost? Do you fear ghosts especially?”

“Oh, he is no boggart, no,” said Mrs Ciel-Greengrass quietly, and they stopped dancing. “We all have seen him at one point or another. He talks to my younger daughter. He does not talk to us.”

They sat next to Rhiannon so as not to disturb the happy couple with their talk of ghosts. Mrs Ciel-Greengrass looked faintly guilty for bringing up the topic.

“I contacted the Spirit Division when we finally moved back in after the first war, and they told me that they have records of complaints from my husband’s family that are centuries old. That tells me they do not know how to get rid of our ghost.”

“Well, they don’t exactly _get rid_ of ghosts…” said Mr Lupin timidly. “But if he causes undue disturbance, they may step in. For instance, has he been aggressive?”

“He talks to my daughter,” Mrs Ciel-Greengrass repeated.

Mr Lupin evidently did not think this was as significant as Mrs Ciel-Greengrass did. His lack of a shared reaction led her to eventually change the subject, disappointed.

The wedding cake was brought out when Tonks and her parents had danced to their heart’s content. Professor Lupin’s breath had been taken away by Tonks, both figuratively and literally, and he sank into a chair after cutting the cake with her.

“The cake is vanilla,” Tonks announced. “Although, if it changes colour on you, the flavour might change too… if Hestia and I did this right!”

Mrs Ciel-Greengrass looked aghast that Tonks had been involved in baking her own wedding cake. Rhiannon watched in amazement as Tonks’s piece of cake turned red. She put a piece in her mouth, nodded, and said, “a nice hint of cherry.”

“Reassure me again that this isn’t Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Bean cake, dear,” said Professor Lupin as his own slice turned bright yellow.

“I promise,” Tonks answered.

“Ah, lemon,” Professor Lupin said with relief. “It’s delicious, Dora.”

Rhiannon’s own slice of cake had a sweet strawberry flavour, whilst Mrs Ciel-Greengrass’s was blueberry. She ate it in careful bites even though Rhiannon knew she liked it. Mrs Tonks gave her own piece a quizzical look.

“Mum’s afraid of her cake,” Tonks chuckled.

“Green, Dromeda? That must mean it’s cabbage flavour,” joked Mr Tonks.

“It’s… lime,” Mrs Tonks announced once she tried it, and everyone smiled at her bravery.

Moody, Mr Tonks, and Hestia Jones all had a few more rounds of Firewhiskey after dessert. Professor Lupin and Tonks moved closer to Mrs Ciel-Greengrass and Rhiannon, who were under the window. Mrs Ciel-Greengrass immediately began to fuss over the bride, finally having her all to herself. She thanked her over and over for including her, and Rhiannon was glad she had overcome her initial snobbery. The two women talked about nothing of Rhiannon’s interest, and then a shade of sadness touched Professor Lupin’s face when he caught sight of the moonrise.

“My O.W.L.s are next week, Professor,” Rhiannon said, desperate to distract him from anything less than pleasant on his mind.

The truth was the O.W.L.s were about as pleasant to her as the waxing gibbous moon was to him, but adults tended to like to talk about academic milestones.

“You have ten exams, don’t you? I thought I remembered you saying you took Divination,” Professor Lupin said. “What classes do you really want to continue?”

“Defence Against the Dark Arts and Charms for sure,” Rhiannon said. “I have other hopes and dreams, but, er, I have to see my results first…”

“I dropped History of Magic like it was a Fire Crab,” Professor Lupin whispered with a smile. “N.E.W.T. Charms was quite enjoyable, though.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Rhiannon said, though she regretted it would not be with Professor Flitwick after her move abroad.

“Dora and I both heard your band’s last release,” said Professor Lupin unexpectedly, and Rhiannon felt like she swallowed a rock. “You know her, she loves all that. She had me listen to it after I came back from my, er, adventure.”

“I…” Rhiannon said, but there was, of course, that rock she had swallowed.

“I liked it too,” he said brightly, and the rock shrank to a pebble. “You did a fantastic job. I should have learnt to play guitar. Maybe I would have been cooler in school.”

“Thank you, Professor!” Rhiannon said. “We, er, had to disband because of the war and all, but maybe one day…”

“I don’t doubt you’ll make a comeback. You have it in you. I’ll be looking forward to it when this is all said and done,” he said. “We all need a little music, even if I’m no good at dancing.”

Professor Lupin touched a brutal claw mark behind his ear absentmindedly. It was profoundly personal to see self-consciousness in a full grown adult. Rhiannon had always hoped her self-loathing would ease up after teenhood was over. Maybe it would take more than leaving school to shake the feeling of being rejected so thoroughly in the past.

“Er, thank you, Professor. That really means a lot,” Rhiannon said. “Tonks liked your dancing, for the record,” she added in a whisper.

Tonks, who was right next to them, made her ear expand out to her shoulder and cupped her hand round it, though her hand was now much smaller in comparison.

“I heard my name,” she said.

“We were talking about my lamentable dancing,” the professor responded.

“Aw, nonsense, Remus,” said Tonks, and her ear shrunk back to normal size. “Did you _see_ Dad?”

“I had the privilege,” he said, and they all shared a look.

It was not long before Mrs Ciel-Greengrass was hugging Mrs Tonks goodbye and thanking her for the tenth time. Alastor Moody was smacking Lyall Lupin on the back.

“Oh wait! Muggle brides throw their bouquets to single ladies, don’t they?” Tonks asked Rhiannon. “Dad asked me if I was going to see if Mad-Eye caught it. He’d see it coming with his eye, you know, and think it was a threat. It’d be the perfect prank.”

Tonks had picked up her bouquet much in the manner of a Quaffle and looked nearly ready to hurl it across the room. Rhiannon had never been to a wedding before, Wizarding or Muggle, but she was one-hundred percent certain that that was not how it was done.

“I think they throw it into a crowd, er, intact,” Rhiannon said.

“I see, I see,” Tonks said thoughtfully. “Well, then, I want you to have it, Rhiannon. Good luck for you and someone really special.”

“Oh, wow, Tonks…” Rhiannon said, carefully holding the flowers and uttering her deepest thanks as they hugged. Flowers always made her think of _her_ Hestia, who loved Herbology. Her thoughts were getting carried away.

“Thank you for coming, Rhiannon,” Professor Lupin said, arms outstretched.

Oh, didn’t he know that he didn’t need to thank her? She would have fought her way all the way up here to see him on his big day. It was priceless to see him without the gloom that had overtaken him in recent years. Professor Lupin was her one true role model. He had never done anything to spoil that admiration, unlike other teachers such as Barty Crouch or Severus Snape. He was in the Order of the Phoenix, not with the Death Eaters. He was truly brave, truly kind, and truly hard to let go of. He didn’t know she was leaving the country soon. He didn’t know her pain.

“I don’t want you worrying about those O.W.L.s. You can do anything you set your mind to,” Professor Lupin said.

He saw her choking up and brushed the line of tears off her cheek. His hands were rough and scarred and perfect. It had been his scars that had made her not feel so horrible about her permanently mutilated arm.

“You always make me feel better,” Rhiannon said in the very firmest voice she could muster under the circumstances.

“You have done very much the same for me, Rhiannon, without realising it. Did you know that?”

She searched his face for the comforting pretence, the nice lie, but there wasn’t one. He didn’t mind taking the extra moment as others were finishing up their goodbyes. He and Tonks joined hands and beamed at Rhiannon.

“Not many people thought the same of me after word got out about my condition. But you didn’t think anything of it. Sometimes, I think there are more important lessons to be taught than what might show up on an O.W.L. And I think you’re just the witch to do it, when the time comes.”

Rhiannon turned his message over and over in her head all night. She loved the words and his confidence behind them, but she was unsure of what he meant.


	2. Ordinary Wizarding Levels

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 2 - "Mother" by Lissie (Danzig cover)

Two weeks of O.W.L.s were no way to enjoy the summer before the move abroad. Rhiannon had studied during the school year, but the tragic death of Headmaster Dumbledore had stunted her motivation to stay mentally fresh for delayed exams. Glances at books the night before each exam would have to work, because there was too much else happening at Quennell Park. Astoria’s relatives were all over the mansion, getting their affairs in order and shipping out possessions at the last minute to whereabouts unknown. Some of them still pried Mr Adam Greengrass about where they were going. He was a Secret Keeper, the only one who knew about their final destination. He had personally taken several small groups of the extended family to the “Apparition point” so that they might go into exile sooner, but nobody could contact them once they left, and thus the Secret remained. Mr Greengrass gave absolutely no more information than he had originally, spitting something about “how the Potters died” at his most pestering relatives. Any risk of being tracked by Death Eaters defeated the purpose of such an evacuation. They would first go to a checkpoint that was easy enough to Apparate to. From there, they would go to a second point that would allow them to travel to their new residence. That was all Rhiannon knew. She was with the part of the family that was staying round longer for O.W.L.s and belongings.

On the Monday of the Charms O.W.L., Rhiannon and Astoria put on their comfiest robes and stacked their hair high atop their heads and out of the way. Neither of them knew what to expect, since all the older students they knew had taken their O.W.L.s the normal way at school. Rhiannon knew even less than Astoria, having never been to the Ministry of Magic before. Mr Greengrass, who once worked at the Ministry, had dressed up even nicer than he usually did for the occasion and met the girls by one of the fireplaces. He raised his eyebrows at their attire, but did not pursue the subject. He put a firm hand on Astoria’s shoulder and asked her how she felt. Rhiannon knew he was really asking how she felt _about the O_. _W_. _L_. _s_. Astoria knew, too, and since she was speaking again, she answered.

“I am prepared for Charms, Father.”

“Both of you ladies have the badges they sent ready? We need them to get in,” Mr Greengrass said, and Rhiannon pinned a silver nametag on her chest that said _Rhiannon N_. _Clarke_ : _O_. _W_. _L_. _Examinee_.

They teleported through the Floo Network and landed in a huge fireplace. The first thing Rhiannon noticed was that there were more fireplaces across from them that must have served as exits. It was very dark inside the Ministry building, and to an extent, it reminded Rhiannon of the Slytherin common room. The accents, however, were gold rather than silver, and all of the lights cast on the gold statues shone down to the overly-polished floor. It made it look wet, and Rhiannon kept feeling like she was bound to slip and fall somewhere in the room. Astoria, who was used to the place, became more alert as they passed an especially ugly fountain; she reached into her pocket and threw several Sickles into the water without a second thought. Sickles to her were nothing.

They had to stop by security, where a line of students and their relatives were already waiting. Rhiannon scanned the many faces, hoping to see Hestia, but she wasn’t there yet. She saw Ginny Weasley at the very front of the line with her dad, and just a few places ahead of them stood Alexa Crover, their classmate. Rhiannon was going to say hello to them, but Ginny was in conversation, and Alexa looked too nervous.

“Good morning, Eric,” Mr Greengrass said to the security wizard. “My youngest is taking her Ordinary Wizarding Levels today. I am also escorting her friend.”

Eric, whose gruff voice and tone of indifference had been carrying well down the line, instantly became cordial and enthusiastic in the presence of Mr Greengrass. He scanned them quickly with a Dark detector.

“There are several in front of you going for exactly the same thing. Mr Greengrass, I’m sure you know where the testing room is in the Department of Magical Education?”

“I do recall where it is. Thank you, Eric. My Astoria had tested into Hogwarts here with one year’s advancement. Not to mention two years’ advancement in Astronomy. We’re _very_ proud of her,” Mr Greengrass said, still holding his daughter’s shoulder.

“I’m sure you are. Well, best of luck to you, Miss Greengrass,” said Eric sycophantically. “Will you produce your wand for a moment? Thank you.”

Eric placed Astoria’s wand into a golden scale, which made a little noise and printed a piece of parchment.

“Twelve and a quarter inches, dragon heartstring. Five years of use?” Eric read from the parchment.

“Yes,” Astoria said, and Eric stuck the parchment on a receipt holder, and then held out his hand for Rhiannon’s wand.

Rhiannon instantly noticed the different tones coming from the instrument behind Eric’s desk. It was also taking longer than Astoria’s wand. Rhiannon grew nervous that she would somehow be banned from taking her exams due to her off-brand wand. At least she wasn’t using Professor Crouch’s anymore. They’d probably all spend the week in gaol.

“Eleven inches, Acromantula web core?” Eric asked, making a face at the parchment.

“Yeah,” Rhiannon piped.

“Five years of use… Er, forked on the end once? Core replaced?”

“Yes.”

“Here you go,” he said, handing back her wand at last. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Rhiannon said, and she followed Astoria and Mr Greengrass to the lifts, searching to see if her own reflection would appear in the glittering ceiling.

She bumped into more than one person that way, and decided to watch where she was going after that. Filing into the lift with the Greengrasses and a handful of strangers, Rhiannon noticed that they were going down rather than up. Level seven was announced through a magical intercom, or perhaps just a witch’s voice. Nobody in the lift was stopping at the Department of Magical Games and Sports, so the lift continued its descent. Level Six was announced as the Department of Magical Transport, though Mr Greengrass stepped out there onto another heavily polished floor. Rhiannon followed, her eyes tricking her, taking care not to slip between the gates of the elevator. It seemed like the magic imbued in their identification tags led the witch’s voice to ring through the hallways.

“The Department of Magical Education, incorporating the Wizarding Examinations Authority, the Hogwarts Board of Governors Office, and the Academic Disciplinary Office, is located to the left at the end of the hallway.”

“Yes, yes, we know…” Mr Greengrass muttered to himself. The disembodied voice was not the sort that could answer back.

Rhiannon took note of everyone passing by her. A young wizard in a tall hat had just exited the door to her right, looking high off his mind. Rhiannon looked at the door behind him, which had a gold metal placard that read _Floo Network Authority_. An older wizard with an eerily similar expression on his face passed by her shortly after; he had come down the hall from what Rhiannon guessed had been the main office for transportation.

“Hey, er, Astoria?”

“I know,” Astoria said, not turning her head toward Rhiannon but toward the wizards passing them.

“Father? I need to tell you something,” Astoria said.

“What ever is wrong, darling?” he asked, stopping right in the middle of the hall, leading several other passers-by to reroute.

Astoria said something in French, but Rhiannon heard _Imperius_ , and knew that her hunch had been right. Astoria was getting very good at Legilimency; if someone was Imperiused, she could probably sense it with more than the usual suspicion. However, it was only moments after Astoria had said it that an argument broke out between her father and her. It was not Rhiannon’s usual idea of an argument, since their voices were both quiet, but the speed of their speech increased from what Rhiannon already considered to be fast French. Like most arguments the Greengrasses had, Astoria lost. No further action was taken, and the obviously Imperiused wizards disappeared into the lift.

“Mr Greengrass, I think she’s right,” Rhiannon spoke up. “I’m actually the one who noticed the signs.”

“Is that so?” Mr Greengrass said impatiently, checking his watch. “Well, your Charms O.W.L. is in twenty minutes, and any sort of report we would file would rather prevent you from taking that. That report alone would be two hours in this place. I can mention this to security after you are done with testing, if that’s what you want. I don’t know _what_ makes you two so certain…”

“I was Imperiused before, and it just seemed––” Rhiannon said, since Astoria would sooner tell her father that she had kissed Draco Malfoy than had practised Legilimency.

“You were _Imperiused_? When? At Hogwarts? _How did I not know about this_? _Who did that to you_?” Mr Greengrass erupted, nearly elbowing an employee carrying an armful of broken broom handles.

“It was before I even met you, sir,” Rhiannon said, hoping to calm him, but his thick eyebrows were still making all sorts of angry shapes.

“…Later,” Mr Greengrass said firmly, looking at his watch again. “We’ll discuss all of this later. Focus on your exams, girls.”

They passed through the main door of the Department of Magical Education and were immediately bunched into a thin, horizontal room with a glass window and bad lighting. Several other fifth years were waiting there with their parents, but Rhiannon noticed Abigail Pugh, the seventh-year Prefect from her House, waiting in the queue alone to take her N.E.W.T.s. Katie Bell of Gryffindor stood by one of her friends, and Rhiannon was glad that her last year of school had all worked out for her in spite of her being cursed. It had been Mrs Ciel-Greengrass who had helped Katie catch up on school work, so she must have recognised Mr Greengrass, too. Katie caught sight of him from the other end of the cramped room and said good morning. He bowed forward.

Even as people in front of them walked through a door at the end of the tubular room, still more people came in behind them. Rhiannon wished everyone would hurry up so they could leave this poorly-designed room. The witch behind the glass had faded, charmed red hair and a chewed quill. She had stacks of papers all round her desk, but none of them interfered with the floral blue name card that said _Beatrix Edgecombe_. When the Greengrasses stepped forward, the witch suddenly threw her germy quill sideways down to the floor and pulled another one out of the drawer like nobody would notice.

“A-Adam! What a surprise!” she said, and even if her voice wasn’t squeaky, it certainly sounded that way through the glass.

“Good morning, Trixie. My daughter and her friend have the Charms O.W.L. today.”

“Well, what do you know? O.W.L.s already! Step forward, honey, let me get a look at you. Oh, yes, you still do look like your father… such a beautiful young lady,” said Trixie, putting her fresh quill into her hair. She had done this absentmindedly, and started looking for something to write with. She took yet another quill out of her drawer, and her long, fake eyelashes fluttered down at the parchment. She seemed very happy for the early hour it was. Mr Greengrass looked impatient.

“Will they need to provide identification?” he asked.

“Oh no, not once you’re in. This is your little Ravenclaw, isn’t it? I remember her testing into Hogwarts,” Trixie said, nodding to Astoria and putting a hand on her cheek.

Astoria had started to giggle furiously. The effort Astoria was taking to control herself made Rhiannon think there was something much funnier going on than being mistaken for a Ravenclaw.

“Both of my girls are Slytherins,” said Mr Greengrass politely, but it was obvious he was trying to get to business. “We’ll need to sign in…?”

“Oh, yes, have them sign this,” Trixie said, and a piece of parchment dissolved into nothingness on her end of the window, materialising on their side along with a quill that had fortunately not been chewed. “Both Slytherins, then, hm? I bet that’s from your wife. Of course, they don’t Sort where she comes from, do they?”

“No, they do not,” said Mr Greengrass shortly. “Yes, dear, sign there,” he said to Rhiannon.

“Can you imagine, Adam? Not being Sorted? If we hadn’t been Sorted in Ravenclaw, we’d have to deal with all those other Houses… Oh, you find that funny don’t you, honey?” Trixie addressed Astoria, who was utterly scarlet from holding in laughter now.

“Oh, yes,” Astoria said offhandedly as the sign-in sheet magically returned behind the glass. “Being with Gryffindors, yes, who could imagine…”

Trixie gave Astoria a puzzled look and batted her blue eyelids.

“They’ll have lunch between the written and practical, but before then…” Trixie said, and the third quill made certain contact with her mouth. “I’ve been telling the parents to wait in the lobby of the examinations office. If there aren’t enough seats, we do have a little lobby outside of _my_ office…”

“Thank you,” said Mr Greengrass, walking down the hall and shaking his head.

Rhiannon felt Astoria’s soft hand on her arm and leaned sideways to hear her. It was great to see Astoria in such a mood after weeks of those frightening silences.

“That was the girl before Maman,” Astoria whispered. “A social climber. I was trying to see exactly how Father broke up with her. I needed my wand for something detailed like that, though. Oh, it was going to be good. I know it was.”

The next hallway had four doors, all labelled with gold signs. Two stood out to Rhiannon: the Board of Governors Office was highly decorated with a dragon scale pattern, and the door for the Academic Disciplines Office had looming gargoyles. Rhiannon followed the Greengrasses through the doors to the Wizarding Examinations Authority, where the room was thankfully as wide as it was long, and there was plenty of room to sit for students and family alike.

Montel Davis was sitting with his father not far from them. Rhiannon always liked talking to Montel, but she thought it might get awkward since Mr Davis had been their producer when her band was together. Due to the threat of Death Eaters, Pariah had started an indefinite hiatus as soon as they became genuinely popular. Part of that decision came from Professor Snape’s urging toward Rhiannon to lie low. It was surreal to her now that he was one of the people being searched for in connection with the murder of Albus Dumbledore. Rhiannon added him to the list of Death Eaters who had paradoxically taken interest in her safety. They must not have read the fine print about killing Muggle-borns, huh?

There was a continuous message playing in this waiting room just below the threshold of irritation. Astoria had been paying attention to it, so Rhiannon didn’t prioritise it at first. Then she realised she wasn’t going to get very far in life by waiting for Astoria to tell her what was happening, and listened to the repeating message:-

_…will be permitted to enter the screening room in two minutes and thirty-two seconds. Students will be inspected for any cheating devices. No personal items are permitted in the Wizarding Examination Authority test room. Quills will be provided. Students will surrender their wands after identification for the duration of the written examination. Students requiring accommodations will submit their forms once in the screening room. Students will be permitted to enter the screening room in two minutes and one second…_

Rhiannon looked as far across the room in both directions for signs of her girlfriend and Flora. Maybe they were late. Maybe their aunt and uncle had forbidden them from the O.W.L.s. Maybe they were in trouble at home, being attacked by the people who were supposed to love and protect them.

Mr Greengrass did not wish Rhiannon and Astoria good luck when it was time to go in for screening, but looked from one girl to the other and said, “You can do this.”

Rhiannon knew Hestia and Flora had to be there somewhere…

“O.W.L. STUDENTS TO THE LEFT! N.E.W.T. STUDENTS TO THE RIGHT! FIFTH-YEARS LEFT! SEVENTH-YEARS RIGHT!” shouted an elderly witch as the test-takers filed into a large and extremely bright room.

“We didn’t have to do any of this for the O.W.L.s,” Rhiannon heard a recent graduate say. “Although I heard a rumour that we’ll get our results by the end of each week this way.”

“Great,” said another graduate standing nearby, “I can get disowned even quicker for failing, then.”

Rhiannon squinted on account of the bright light, which was definitely coming from more places than only the ceiling. A policeman from her old neighbourhood might have just shined the torch in her face. She and Astoria shuffled to the left, into a very inefficient group of other shufflers. It took a while for the O.W.L. kids to separate from the N.E.W.T. kids and form what might have been a queue, bunched into itself in several places. Thankfully, Astoria offered to go ahead of Rhiannon. They watched the long line of students step up onto a platform and get scanned by a similar instrument Rhiannon encountered at the main security desk. Rhiannon soon accepted her fate of standing in this line for a long time. Every single time somebody had brought in their own quill, a snack, or scratch parchment, it had to be confiscated. It was not a quiet ordeal, either, since the detector being used by the elderly witch and her cohort gave off a loud shout every time there was an unpermitted item. Rhiannon turned her pockets inside out, letting a sweets wrapper fell to the floor, and Vanished it quietly. She had a 2p in there somehow, and a chocolate frog card of Paracelsus. Those were probably highly illegal items in the eyes of the Wizarding Examination Authority, who had just confiscated someone’s hair pin, so Rhiannon Vanished them, too.

“Name?” asked the testing official when Astoria stepped up on the platform and flipped her pockets inside-out.

“A-S-T-O-R-I-A Greengrass.”

“Wand?”

The wizard labelled Astoria’s wand with a conjured tag. Astoria’s head dropped as she saw that they were throwing all the wands down a sort of laundry chute, which burped occasionally and was anything but reassuring. The wizard waved the shiny gold detector over Astoria, and it did not make its usual shout.

Rhiannon stepped forward on the platform, emptied her pockets, stated her name, and surrendered her wand. She was subjected to the same detector, and when it shouted, Rhiannon had no clue what could have caused it. The problem was that security personnel tend not to like clueless looks on people who set alarms off.

“Pockets empty?”

“Yeah,” said Rhiannon, groping herself all over.

She heard sighs from the people behind her as she tried to figure out what had set off the alarm. One of those people was Diane Carter, who wasted no time in saying, “ _Muggle-borns_. The only way they can pass these tests is to cheat.”

“Can you remove your outer robe, then?” the wizard said gruffly, and Rhiannon complied.

She shook it out. A single piece of Frosted Honey Frogs cereal had been stuck to her robe and fell to the floor. When the wizard scanned her again, no alarms went off. Amazing how a budding Legilimens could get into the testing room undetected, but a piece of cereal held up the line!

“No snacks allowed, fatty,” Diane Carter giggled for Imogen Stretton’s amusement.

Rhiannon didn’t have time to care. She and Astoria followed the line into the main testing room. Hestia and Flora were bound to show up in there. They must have been way ahead of her. Maybe they had to come to the Ministry alone, or with their dad.

A few students tried to take seats just to disperse from the crowd, but one of the test proctors shouted, “NO, NOT THERE! ALPHABETICAL ORDER!” as if anybody could figure that out in a multi-House situation. She started traipsing along the aisles, reading off names from the long piece of parchment faster than most people could organise themselves at the correct seat. Finally, Rhiannon saw Hestia.

Hestia, but not her twin sister, was in pyjamas. That was drawing the eye of many, but particularly the test proctor, who kept verging on saying something in spite of being busy. Hestia’s light brown hair was tied back, falling between her sloping shoulders and standing out against the pyjama pattern of galloping unicorns. She might have just crawled out of bed in the dormitory. She had a sweet, sleepy look on her face so characteristic of times when she wished to be cuddled. Rhiannon drank in her natural beauty as they made eye contact at last. Hestia smiled and ran from her seat to embrace Rhiannon. They exchanged basic words of good luck. Rhiannon desperately wanted something clever or funny to say to her.

Hestia’s beauty had one rival: her attractive character. It always showed on her face, at least to Rhiannon, and set her apart from her identical twin. Hestia was not jaded by the world even in the face of adversity. Her mischievous streak was associated with hilarious pranking rather than using the outer fringe of the Dark arts. Where Flora was prone to snide remarks and long, boring bouts of quietude, Hestia was wholesomely expressive. She gave her affections freely to Rhiannon and sought the fun in life. That was why their group had a tendency to pair off between classes, even in the early days of their friendship. Rhiannon and Hestia’s coupling meant that Astoria and Flora would be knee-deep in their serious discussions. Rhiannon and Astoria’s quality time meant that the twins would walk side by side and whisper entire conversations to each other. But now, even as Rhiannon had to separate from her girlfriend to take her Charms O.W.L., she deeply needed all three of her friends at once. Rhiannon couldn’t believe she’d agreed to leave Hestia and Flora for an unspecified period of time during the war. A family that had fostered her out of pity was soon going to uproot her from her homeland.

Rhiannon began her O.W.L. with a racing, heavy heart. She had prepared well for this test, even if she could not prepare for losing contact with the girl she loved and the friend she cherished. Rhiannon did experience her usual lapses of concentration from time to time, and thoughts about losing Hestia were not the only culprit. She wondered if Astoria was able to glean any information from other students with Legilimency. It felt wrong to assume Astoria would be a dishonest test-taker, but Rhiannon could never be sure of the girl’s command of wandless Legilimency. Sometimes it felt like she knew all sorts of things. Other times, she was clueless. Maybe Rhiannon was so focused on Astoria’s academic integrity because of her disgust about what happened with Draco Malfoy. She wasn’t being fair to Astoria. Then again, not very much about Astoria was fair.

Being in the same place where Astoria had tested into Rhiannon’s year reminded Rhiannon of the privileges of being raised in Wizarding society. Rhiannon hadn’t even had a chance of testing in to anything. Looking at some of the harder questions on her Charms O.W.L., she knew that even if she was raised in Wizarding culture, she wouldn’t have tested a year ahead, but somebody like Hermione Granger would have easily tested one or two years ahead for _all_ of her classes if given the chance! Nor could Muggle-borns like Rhiannon and Hermione ever hope to use magic outside of school without the threat of expulsion. As Rhiannon had seen by staying at Quennell Park, though, some basic magic could be disguised under the cover of adult magic at the same location. Simple charms went by unpunished for a pureblood like Astoria. And she rarely understood her privilege, thinking nothing special about her day-to-day life. Rhiannon wasn’t angry, but she was disappointed.

Rhiannon quickly checked the answers she had scribbled in, and then it was time for her first essay prompt: _A witch has moved into a house with several charms still in effect on the property that are not useful to her: a) a Caterwauling Charm is over the front door, but she prefers it to be on the back shed; b) an Amplifying Charm is over the doorbell that makes it too loud; c) a light fixture she does not want is Hovering in the kitchen. Explain, in detail, the charms and/or countercharms she would use to correct these issues_. _Also, write in the incantations for the original spells mentioned above should she desire to use these features again_.

Rhiannon gripped her quill. Multifaceted questions like this always exacerbated her nerves and made it harder to concentrate. She hated test-taking as it was, but she needed extra time to break questions like this down. The English composition book Snape had given her had been useful not only to improve her writing skills, but it also got her more used to answering stupid questions like this coherently. She scowled at her newfound writing skill. Why had Snape become a Death Eater in the first place if he was going to go out of his way to be helpful to her? Had he been embarrassed of her performance all along? Did he become a Death Eater when he had been young and stupid, and did he regret it in the slightest now? Rhiannon cringed at the thought of how many of her “young and stupid” classmates would join up with Voldemort. It didn’t excuse it. And she still had four more essays to do.

The two-hour written examination left Rhiannon feeling sweaty and defeated. Rhiannon, Astoria, and the twins quickly bunched together. The first thing Rhiannon asked Hestia when they were excused for lunch was if Amycus or Alecto had accompanied her to the test.

“No, they’re so _busy_ lately, you see,” Hestia said unhappily.

“They’ve never been fond of being out in public,” Flora bitterly added.

It was hectic trying to get out of the department and away from all the people who slowed the traffic by stopping to talk to their parents. Rhiannon noticed that the N.E.W.T. students had not been excused for lunch like they had.

Mr Greengrass wanted to ask Astoria about every aspect of the exam she had just taken. Rhiannon and the twins shuffled unsurely, not wanting to leave her, but not wanting to be rushed for lunch, either. In a few moments, Astoria convinced her father to join them on the walk for lunch, since it was obvious he wouldn’t excuse her without a thorough knowledge of every answer she had put on the test. They snaked through the narrow hallway of rooms and into the other narrow hallway of the general department. Once in the main passage of the sixth floor, Rhiannon remembered seeing the Imperiused wizards. Mr Greengrass was deep in conversation with his daughter, so she directed the concern to Hestia and Flora.

“I guarantee there are plenty of Imperiused people running about by now,” said Flora with a shrug.

“But… we were gonna report it… with Mr Greengrass…” said Rhiannon.

“Oh, by all means, go ahead,” Flora said with a sarcastic nod. “And because of the way things work round here, the report is bound to go through somebody who is either _in on it_ or Imperiused themselves, and nothing will get done.”

“I’d like to Imperius the test scorers,” Hestia said, and Rhiannon was surprised by her lack of care.

The twins knew something she didn’t, and that frightened her to the point that she couldn’t even ask. She did not know how much danger lurked in the building where all she was trying to do was take her tests. The most she could do, or at least the most it felt like she could do, was stay near Mr Greengrass in a sea of unsolved problems. The cafeteria was located on the main level of the Ministry, well out of the way of the bustling fireplaces and lifts. The room had impractical grandeur considering that everyone queued up for a long self-serve buffet. The same overly polished floor would easily disguise the hazard of spilt drinks. Rhiannon wasn’t feeling very adventurous and picked a chicken sandwich and a salad. Mr Greengrass’s plate had every colour of the rainbow, and his expression went well with it, since it seemed Astoria had done a good job on the written part of Charms. The twins joined them at a long table.

A cherry tomato avoided Rhiannon’s fork for several tries. She had just realised that she was about a twenty minute taxi ride away from where she used to live. That meant she was not far from her friend P.R., who had opened his music shop at eleven. She wondered if he really missed her, or if she had been a pity case to him, too –– someone he had to babysit for free so the beatings wouldn’t be so frequent. She longed to see P.R. either way, even if what he meant to her was not what she meant to him. She felt that way about several people who had been kind to her. She picked up the tomato with her fingers and plopped it in her mouth, thinking about what her mother Jessica might be doing. She thought about how many people were talking to their mothers this very moment about their O.W.L.s, receiving words of encouragement, praise, or concern. Hestia and Flora had never had a mother, either. Rhiannon wondered if they got jealous sometimes, too, or if they had somehow grown out of that. Did anybody ever really grow out of that, though?

After returning to the testing centre, everybody had to be inspected again, and the line was more disorganised than before. Mr Greengrass got Rhiannon’s attention before she had a chance to follow Astoria in to be screened.

“How do you think you performed on the written examination?” he asked.

“Er…”

Rhiannon wasn’t sure if he cared about her exams because she had lived in his house for so long, or if he was being a curious Ravenclaw. She told him she did good, then said, “er, did _well_.”

These people were exhausting.

“Excellent,” said Mr Greengrass, patting her on the shoulder. “I’ll be frank, Rhiannon, I was worried for your written exam as much as I am still worried for Astoria’s practical one. So this is very good news. Keep it up, yes? You girls have such different strengths. I think that’s what makes you such dear friends.”

“Oh, er, I’ll do my best,” Rhiannon said nervously.

Rhiannon still wondered if Astoria might try to use Legilimency during the test. She hated herself for thinking that over and over. They weren’t just “dear friends;” they were going to get old and crabby together and Apparate to each other’s doorsteps to complain about which muscle they pulled the other day. Why couldn’t she get the idea of Astoria cheating out of her head?

There wasn’t any food on her robes the next time she was screened for the test, but plenty of messy eaters set off the alarm with lingering crumbs. Curtis Evercreech’s eyeglasses, which had been approved the first time, had to be examined at length because he had accidentally smudged them in a “suspicious” fashion. The screening room was newly equipped with conjured chairs, where the students waited until their names were called alphabetically. Hestia, Flora, and a Hufflepuff named Poppy Caxton were all sadly stuck completing some of their practical O.W.L.s with Diane Carter in close proximity. Rhiannon didn’t know the people she was taking her practical exams with very well. Brian Cinderford and Rachael Codnor were Gryffindors from her Potions class, but she never talked to them. She didn’t remember Luke Cholderton of Hufflepuff at all; her Sorting had been so long ago. Hestia was almost done demonstrating a basic Sticking Charm when Rhiannon walked in to find a station. She looked for Flora, but realised that students had to exit the test room through a different passageway than they had come in to prevent discussions about the test.

Rhiannon had to perform a great variety of useful charms, but some others could have passed for magic tricks at a Muggle kid’s birthday party. She imagined Professor Flitwick tap dancing with the same vigour as the teacup on her desk as she was able to perform every spell asked of her. Luke Cholderton looked like he had got all the spells, too. Rhiannon congratulated him, whoever the heck he was. She followed the designated exit hallway back to the lobby where Mr Greengrass was reading the summer issue of _Artful Arithmancy_. He put his gold-chained reading glasses in his chest pocket and stood to greet Rhiannon, who in all honesty was merely looking for Hestia.

“How do you feel about it, Rhiannon?”

“I cast all the spells well enough, I think.”

“Excellent! I knew you could do it,” he nodded.

“…Oh, thanks. Yeah, it really wasn’t so bad.”

Rhiannon quickly returned Mr Greengrass’s smile and located Hestia. Despite all the examiner’s precautions, she and Flora were talking to Mr Davis about what they had been tested on and what Montel was likely to face in the coming minutes. Then they sat with Rhiannon in a corner and looked indifferently at the magazine titles Mr Greengrass had been so interested in.

“We have to be back by three o’clock,” Flora said to Rhiannon with uncomfortable fixity.

It was 2:45. So much for getting to talk. Rhiannon offered to at least walk them back to the fireplaces on the main level, but Hestia refused, citing the threat of Imperiused workers. She squeezed Rhiannon’s hand, but neither hugged nor kissed her. It was Rhiannon’s first taste of really losing her. She would see her for a total of nine more days, and then the promises they had made would need to stretch a great distance. Rhiannon sat alone in the waiting room for several minutes, contemplating what it would be like when they reunited with each other, however long that might be. It would obviously require that neither of them die, but there was much more to it than that.

Astoria, for all of her ignorant excuses for Malfoy, had had no reason to believe that he had become an actual, full-blown Death Eater. It made Rhiannon realise that the very same thing could happen to Hestia. Voldemort could be starting people young so that he would have a tight hold of their pureblood genes by the time they got married. Rhiannon shivered as her thoughts spiralled out of control, painting images of Hestia being forced to marry some ugly male Death Eater. It could be ages before this war ended. There was no guarantee Voldemort would lose. Rhiannon might never come back. How long would it take Hestia to break their promise of sticking it out? Worse yet, Rhiannon wondered how long it would take to give up on the idea of reuniting with Hestia. Perhaps there would be some way to get Hestia, Flora, and their dad out of Britain. She was half-tempted to ask Mr Greengrass about any options, but she knew any attempt to rescue the twins would put the Greengrasses in even more danger.

When Astoria finished her Charms O.W.L., Mr Greengrass spent plenty of time asking her what she was able or unable to cast. Astoria was trying to convince her dad that the only spells she missed were the ones with incantations she forgot, but he looked sceptical. Rhiannon and Astoria shared a couple of looks to the side. Astoria was getting red and huffy, so Rhiannon quietly said, “I believe you,” and it made a world of difference.

Unlike what Hestia and Flora had anticipated with the Ministry’s mismanagement, Adam Greengrass knew exactly how to navigate the place and find the right person to talk to. Everything about his appearance and behaviour suggested that he was _special_ , and that if he wanted to talk to the Head of the Aurors, he could walk right into the office and knock on his door. Rhiannon tried to mimic Astoria’s expression of purpose instead of looking like the curious visitor she was. Mostly, she thought of how far underground she was, and it was not easy to remember the details of the Imperiused wizards she had seen so early that morning. The grizzled Gawain Robards, the Auror boss, turned his attention to Astoria, since Mr Greengrass had not noticed the Imperius Curse victims, and Rhiannon hardly had enough descriptions after a long day of the Charms O.W.L.

Rhiannon was alarmed that Astoria had gleaned the wizards’ names off their badges, which was a huge help. However, nobody –– Robards included –– knew who could have cast the curse.

“You almost learn to expect these issues nowadays,” the Auror grimaced. “I know even Rufus says…”

Robards coughed, like he had said too much about the fragility of the Ministry. He had a grave but highly informal manner. Unlike how Rhiannon had pictured the Head of the Aurors to be, Robards was open to conversation.

“What I can’t understand is why it’s Magical Transportation people,” he said to Astoria. “Could mean there’s an agent in the department and it was convenient. Or it could be You-Know-Who trying to get an edge on the Floo Network. Still, if I was tying to infiltrate some place, I’d probably start somewhere higher up than _Broom Control_ , eh?”

Astoria nodded, wide-eyed. Robards suddenly remembered he was talking to a teenager. He coughed again, recognising how offended Mr Greengrass was that he had not been included in the primary chat.

“I’ll get right on this, Mr Greengrass.”

“Thank you, Mr Robards. That’s much better than the ‘looking into it’ that usually happens round here.”

“B’lieve me, I know.”

“Mr Robards,” Astoria said as the Auror started writing a report, “I want this to be completely anonymous.”

Mr Greengrass blinked. He wished he had thought to ask that first. He wished that he had done most of the talking.

“You got it,” said Robards. “Anonymous is the only way we can get people to give us tips these days.”

It was a long way back up to the Floo Network Rhiannon was now afraid to use. They all arrived at Quennell Park without issue that time, but if the network was hijacked, Rhiannon could only imagine where it might take them. As the usual Greengrass greetings were taking place in the drawing room, Rhiannon could not look anywhere besides the window. Having not been able to take her Foe-Shard to the Ministry only made her more aware of how compulsively she groped for it in her pockets.

“Rhiannon? Might I have a word in the study?” Mr Greengrass asked her quietly after reassuring his wife as best he could about Astoria’s Charms scores.

Rhiannon could not think of any _sensible_ reason why they had to have their Professor-Crouch-Imperius-Curse discussion in the study rather than right where they were, but she played along anyway. She managed to cut her explanation down to twenty minutes this time, which was a new record for anything to do with Crouch Jr. It didn’t look like Adam Greengrass would have believed the long version, though, either. Rhiannon was hoping to spend at least another ten minutes talking to Astoria about it. Looking for a specific person in Quennell Park, though, was equivalent to finding the sneaky mice in her old flat. During her lengthy search for Astoria, Rhiannon did her best not to alert any of the myriad family members who were now staying in the manor, or else there would be general uproar that the Death Eaters had got her.

“Oh. You can’t find her, either,” said Daphne, suddenly popping her head out of her room.

Daphne had three blouses floating behind her; she was picking out what she would change into for dinner. It was a way of life for her. And here Rhiannon had been so amused lately by seeing the Greengrasses live on what they considered the “necessities” during the move.

“How long have you been looking for her?” Rhiannon asked.

“I gave up. I assumed she went to her room. Since you’re up and down the hall, though…” Daphne sighed.

“Maybe we could both look for her.”

“Well…” Daphne said distantly.

Rhiannon pursed her lips. Astoria was probably fine. So they waited and waited, and finally they heard girly heels clicking on the main stair. Astoria brushed her robe off when they saw her. She grass stains all over her elbows that would require a spell. She was pulling several leaves out of her hair.

“What on earth were you doing out there, Astoria?” Daphne questioned.

“What, I can’t go outside in the summer, and enjoy the estate whilst we’re still here?” Astoria returned.

Rhiannon, who preferred to not interfere with their sisterly spats, sided with Daphne for the first time in her life.

“It’s not that. It’s just you didn’t tell anybody. And the house is so big. You know, with all the Death Eaters in the news. Look at what mess you are!”

Astoria shook her head, loosening a few more leaves from her hair. She must have taken a tumble in the woods.

“All the Death Eaters, yes, you’re right!” she snapped. “I do have to finish that Arithmancy O.W.L. before I am ritually sacrificed to the Lestranges, or else Father would be very troubled!”

Rhiannon and Daphne shared a concerned look. Hyperbole was getting too close to the truth lately to be used in conversation like that. When Thursday’s D.A.D.A. O.W.L. came, and none of the girls in Rhiannon’s group could cast the Patronus Charm for bonus credit, it dug the nail deeper. The twins’ Runespoors were absent, Astoria’s peacock’s failure to arrive broke her heart, and even Rhiannon’s beloved wolf wouldn’t show.

Both Rhiannon and Astoria had to wait until Mr Greengrass was finished scrutinising their first O.W.L. reports on Saturday morning before they even got to see how they scored. It made Rhiannon feel oddly included in the family in the way she did not want to be. After growling about Astoria’s Herbology score, Mr Greengrass finally handed over the reports, which they compared on the sunny front terrace.

_Rhiannon Nicole Clarke has achieved:_

Charms O

Defence Against the Dark Arts O

Herbology A

Transfiguration A

_Astoria Nesrine Greengrass has achieved:_

Ancient Runes A

Charms E

Defence Against the Dark Arts O

Herbology D

Transfiguration E

  
  


“I can continue Transfiguration! Oh, thank God!” Astoria yelped, wrinkling her parchment in her grasp.

“Yeah, you worked really hard on that,” Rhiannon congratulated, at last seeing the proof that Astoria hadn’t cheated with Legilimency all over her grateful face.

“Look at you with two Outstanding scores! Excellent work, Rhi,” Astoria said.

They relaxed on the remaining outdoor furniture. After several minutes of internalising the test scores that decided their fates, they casually started to describe the soft, white clouds. It stopped being quite so casual when they disagreed about whether one particular cloud was a horntail or a dinosaur. It was fun to bicker about it, especially considering that Astoria could only name dinosaurs improperly: stegodactyl and tyrannodon were her choice descriptors. Rhiannon won the debate; it was definitely a horntail.

“I hope the twins received the scores they wanted,” Astoria sighed.

“Flora’s gonna go into detail about how the entire educational system cheated her from birth if she got anything less than O’s,” Rhiannon said.

She imagined Hestia biting her tongue, listening to her sister’s rants. But she tried not to think about Hestia very much at home. They had five more days of seeing each other. As in five more lunch hours, since they were only near each other to take the damn tests. Mr Greengrass was right not to let anyone know where they were relocating. Rhiannon wouldn’t have had it in her to keep it from Hestia, even though the girl lived with two Death Eaters.

Later that evening, it occurred to Rhiannon that she should have been using this time to study. Astoria was still looking at the sparse, fluffy clouds, probably waiting for that exciting but inevitable moment she would spot the faint light of the stars. Rhiannon didn’t really want to get out of her seat, either. What did she have next week that was so important anyway? Magical Creatures? She didn’t need to study.

The night sky changed all the time, Rhiannon knew, but she felt the big picture always looked the same. As Astoria beheld her sky, Rhiannon scanned the grounds for any interesting critters. The shadows crept across the gardens beautifully, almost uniformly, but when the intense darkness stopped making sense given the sunset, Rhiannon sat up. Something wilted the garden, which had gone unmanaged during the stress on the family. She raised her wand and tried to mouth a warning to Astoria. To her shock, Astoria was already watching the garden decay. Her eyes glimmered. She stood and smiled.

 _No_! _Is she under the Imperius Curse_? _Who_ ’ _s out there_?

“He’s come to say goodbye to me after all,” Astoria whispered.

“ _What_?”

“Quennell, our ghost. I’ve been looking for him since school ended.”

“Where is he, then?” Rhiannon asked, also whispering.

Unlike the concerned Mrs Ciel-Greengrass, Rhiannon had never seen this “Quennell” at Quennell Park. Yet other ghosts she knew could not smother the atmosphere in this way. Unwilling to appear, Quennell must have been closer still. Though the air was crisp and sweet, Rhiannon’s lungs were underwater as the pressure of his presence grew unbearable. Only a few seconds felt like time had cut deep into the night, and finally, Rhiannon broke the surface for air. The thing had left.

“He’ll be the only one left here,” Astoria said sadly, clutching the sides of her robes.

“I mean,” Rhiannon said breathlessly, “it is _Quennell_ Park.”

“I don’t want to leave,” Astoria mourned.

Rhiannon nodded unwillingly. At face value, she agreed, but Astoria wasn’t talking about losing her friends, her school, or the security in her life. She was talking about the _phantom_ , the _place_ –– the wood surrounding them and the yawning magic in it.

~

Once the Potions O.W.L. was over, Rhiannon and Hestia had to admit the rest of their week was a bit of a joke. The Care of Magical Creatures exam was only a practical examination, and on top of that, they didn’t have to deal with Astoria and Flora that day. On Wednesday, they had their Astronomy exams, and much like the Hogwarts ceiling, the examination ceiling was charmed to reflect the night sky for observation. It was so much better than standing out in the cold and watching Professor Hagrid get arrested, as Astoria had recounted to them last year. That afternoon, Rhiannon took Divination alone, which was apparently of no consequence compared to Astoria’s even later Arithmancy exam. Rhiannon was tempted to tell her she saw an excellent Arithmancy score in her crystal ball that day just to get her to hush up. The only decent essays Rhiannon managed to muster on her History of Magic exam were the ones about race riots. If only there was some way for the week to be finished without having to become a refugee.

As if the world had planned it, Rhiannon set off the security device whilst trying to get into her Muggle Studies O.W.L. The culprits were a few flakes of pepper left over from her breakfast, due to their barely identifiable resemblance to certain magic “brain powders.” Rhiannon was already tired by the time she was admitted to the testing room, but since Wizarding kids couldn’t be expected to safely use a microwave, the exam had no practical portion. Unlike her other tests, which were a mixture of hard and easy questions throughout, the idea of the Muggle Studies exam was to increase in difficulty as it went on. Only one-third of the way into the test, Professor Burbage had claimed, even Muggle-borns might not have an advantage if they hadn’t taken the class. Rhiannon could see why. She had to come up with five compare-and-contrast answers about spell development and Muggle technological advancements. How could she compare the Internet to anything Wizarding? Rhiannon’s home situation wasn’t the kind where they could afford Internet service. The best she could come up with was a library with an Undetectable Extension Charm on it.

Rhiannon glanced quickly at Hestia. She was definitely scribbling away, but there was no guarantee she had the right answers. Flora, by contrast, was still stewing over the second set of questions. In class, Flora often knew the answer but was too afraid to speak up for fear of using the wrong terms. Rhiannon hoped the best for them on this test at first, but she wondered if the Death Eaters would use high Muggle Studies scores against people in the long run. Maybe she should have been hoping they’d both get Troll scores! They certainly had a chance to with the killer essay on the last part of the test.

 _Describe a day from the perspective of a Muggle, assuming this Muggle is your age and nationality_. _Be sure to note any advantages and disadvantages to living without magic, WITHOUT indicating that you know about magic’s existence_. _For full credit, you must discuss your entire day and include topics of school, work, hobbies, and health._

As far as hobbies and health went, nobody was going to be saved by a bottle of Skele-Gro if they had a bungee jumping accident in the Muggle world. Rhiannon looked at the clock, as if she had ever been good at pacing herself on tests. These tests shouldn’t have been a matter of life or death, but she knew that was one thing the Wizarding and Muggle world had in common: stupidly hard tests for school. She wanted to do well for Professor Burbage, who had always been open-minded and kind, but then again, it wasn’t like Rhiannon planned to take her career anywhere with this O.W.L. With her band broken up, though, she had to take what she could get. She had no clue what the sixth-year course admission policies were at foreign schools; most of the information Snape had given to her only clarified that O.W.L.s would indeed transfer. Rhiannon inked her quill again. She had written fluffy, structure-free essays for most of her life, but if she was using what she had learnt from Snape’s nasty English workbook during her favourite O.W.L.s, she might as well use it for Muggle Studies, too. She knew the whole point of the essay was to understand and appreciate Muggle culture, but she could not help herself and put that her hobby was lobbying for gay rights. It rather spiralled out from there; she talked about witnessing racial discrimination at her job and how she could not afford auto insurance. She wrote until her time was up, and then it sunk in that she was officially no longer a Hogwarts student.

Hestia tried to act like nothing was wrong after the test, though they only had ten minutes before she had to go back to Amycus and Alecto. In the corner of the waiting room, out of the way of the students scurrying to freedom, Hestia took Rhiannon’s hands.

“I remembered Professor Burbage said not to put our Muggle hobby as being a ‘magician.’ Everyone thinks that’s clever and original for some reason,” Hestia said.

“What did you put?”

“I said my hobby was recording teleshopping commercials on tape.”

“What? No one would ever do that!” Rhiannon laughed.

“They wouldn’t? Don’t Muggles like seeing what they can buy right on television?” Hestia asked nervously.

“Er, not enough to _record_ the adverts, no…”

“I said parasailing,” Flora added from an unnecessary distance away.

“Flora, if you’re going to listen to our conversation anyway, you may as well stand with us,” Hestia responded.

“I didn’t want to intrude,” Flora said, since she was the only one of them who wasn’t in denial about the situation.

Rhiannon and Hestia waved Flora towards them, but it wasn’t very long before their usual post-test group huddle turned into an excruciating goodbye. Astoria had had her moment with the twins yesterday, since students not taking examinations weren’t allowed to come, but to do this without her now felt wrong. It had always been the four of them. Rhiannon sorely wished there weren’t any wars or lynchings driving her out. She wanted to be able to write, and visit, and come back to swoop Hestia off to a new place of their own.

“I don’t think other schools have a House like ours… which, er, might be a good thing. But no matter what, you’re always a Slytherin, you hear?” Hestia said emphatically.

Rhiannon liked the reassurance after everything she had been through. She liked the warmth of Hestia’s arms, and how this was the only day of the O.W.L.s she hadn’t worn pyjamas. She liked the extra moments they kept stealing to play with each other’s hair, the homey feeling of Hestia’s carefree touch. It was a privilege to kiss her before she stepped into the fireplace. They would not cry, lest they admit that everything they had built together was being torn from them.


	3. Constant Vigilance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 3 - "The Garden" by Woodlock

The Greengrasses were still waiting for two more branches of the family to arrive at the estate before they would leave England, and it was clearly bothering Mr Greengrass that the rest of his daughter’s O.W.L. scores had not come in yet. He kept only one owl now that Quennell Park had been all but cleared out, so he had to stifle the temptation to write to the Wizarding Examinations Authority.

Daphne was out of sorts at the weekend, to the point that even Rhiannon cared. She had asked Rhiannon for advice about what belongings to “send out” Saturday afternoon and which to keep, in case Mr Greengrass wanted to stay and wait for the O.W.L. scores. This timeframe of departure was causing the largest disagreement among the Greengrasses that Rhiannon had ever seen.

“Er, toothbrush, hairbrush, maybe you could try wearing only one outfit each day…” Rhiannon uttered.

Everything was echoing in the mansion without the usual décor. There had to be a spell to solve something like that, but the fact that no one had cast it meant that the family wanted to know of any abnormal noises going on.

“I’m surprised Astoria parted with her hair potions already. There’s no telling when we’re really leaving. I can actually hear Maman and Daddy arguing downstairs!”

“We’re not going out anywhere before leaving. So you can pack up your hair stuff, too, except what you need to shower.”

“Oh, I only take baths,” Daphne corrected, “so I can soak with extract of––”

“Yeah, okay. The point is if you don’t need it to bathe or dress yourself, it’s probably safe to send it out today.”

Daphne scowled, “You don’t _have_ to help me sort anything.”

“Listen, I’m sorry, but it’s obvious you either brought me here to show off how much stuff you have, or because you think I already know how to live on the bare minimum,” Rhiannon declared.

“That wasn’t it at all! I asked you because everybody else is busy yelling at each other in the lounge, waiting on Uncle What’s-his-Face from Derbyshire.”

“Uncle Glen, I think. One of your great uncle’s sons?”

Rhiannon had made a genuine effort to learn the names of the new people she would be travelling with, and Glen was one of the easier ones to remember compared to things like “Eglantine” and “Gyidyr,” if she had even heard those right.

“Glen! Oh, yes. He never married, did you know that?” Daphne said pointedly.

Rhiannon gritted her teeth. Daphne couldn’t remember the bloke’s name but _wow_ , he didn’t _marry_? That’s really _something_.

Daphne spread seven handbags out on her bed, along with seven coordinated pairs of shoes she could have sent away last month.

“Won’t be needing that many handbags if you send out your stuff, y’know.”

“That’s true… I thought… oh well…”

Daphne’s cheeks filled with air, and she looked even more doll-like in her deep thought.

“Does the number ten mean anything to you today?”

“Er… no?” Rhiannon said. “Unless I got a ten percent on the History O.W.L.”

“Hm. I hoped N.E.W.T. Divination would get me somewhere before I had to transfer. They don’t have it at many other schools, you know,” Daphne said. “Did you plan on continuing it?”

“No, I probably didn’t get the score you need.”

Rhiannon was a little surprised that Daphne had paid enough attention to remember that Rhiannon had taken Divination. Rhiannon had no passion for it, but Daphne had reason to be disappointed since Divination was one of the few O.W.L.s she had earned.

Rhiannon and Daphne waited until the family squabbling subsided to bring down the boxes to Mr Greengrass. It turned out that he had just disconnected Quennell Park from the Floo Network. He was pacing in the entrance hall and looked happy to have something else to do. Rhiannon had never watched Mr Greengrass send out anything before. He placed his wand over each item and chanted numbers in Latin, which appeared in luminous green lines like twine. Rhiannon thought of how Astoria had to manually wand-write her Arithmancy numbers for things like this and wondered if the N.E.W.T. class at their new school would teach this advanced spell.

“Are those… coordinates?” Rhiannon asked of the numbers.

“No, no. That’d be far too risky,” Mr Greengrass said as the boxes disappeared in thin air. “I know what the numbers mean.”

Rhiannon later had a snack in one of the many rooms where food was prohibited. It didn’t matter now, she would argue if a Greengrass challenged her manner, since the room was completely empty. She wondered if the new place would be so unnecessarily enormous. All of the pitter-pattering that was coming from the entrance wing told Rhiannon that it might _have_ to be. It was odd to think of so many extended relatives living together, not as much now that it was an emergency, but before the first war when it was merely a Greengrass custom. Astoria’s grandparents were part of the last generation to live and start families all in the same house. Even if Rhiannon had a family she liked, she couldn’t imagine doing that.

Rhiannon did not see Astoria until both the house and the arguments cooled down. Astoria walked in with an ease Rhiannon had never felt when searching for someone in the estate. Astoria had two letters in her hand, both already opened.

“O.W.L. scores came with the evening mail, eh?” Rhiannon guessed.

“Yes, we’ll be leaving for good in the morning once Renshaw and Gracie get here with her grandfather,” Astoria said quietly. “Oh, Father’s already inspected our results… sorry…”

Rhiannon didn’t care about the letter one way or another. With life as she knew it being ripped apart, whether or not people knew how she scored on a test was irrelevant. Astoria handed Rhiannon both letters at once with an awful look on her face.

“You don’t gotta tell me your scores if you don’t want,” Rhiannon laughed nervously.

“Well, the rest of the family already heard from Father. You’re the only one I’m actually willing to tell.”

Rhiannon took a quick look at the reports, not quite in the mood to reassure Astoria, but Astoria had reassured her plenty of times. That was friendship, wasn’t it?

_Rhiannon Nicole Clarke has achieved:_

Astronomy E

Care of Magical Creatures O

Divination P

History of Magic P

Muggle Studies O

Potions E

_Astoria Nesrine Greengrass has achieved:_

Arithmancy E

History of Magic P

Potions A

“Well, it just looks that way because we got two separate letters. Remember you had all those great scores on the last one?”

“I had a scolding for this one, though. It doesn’t matter. The suspense is over. We’re living through a war… how’s that for knowing my _history of magic_?”

“Exactly!” Rhiannon said. “It’s like your dad forgot what it was like to take notes in Binns’s class!”

“Because he’s snobbish,” Astoria concluded, squeezing her nose. “We’re all _snobbish_! Like a big house and good O.W.L.s are the only important things in the world!”

Rhiannon didn’t say anything. The Greengrasses had always carried themselves a certain way so there would be no mistaking that they were high society. They were kind people, yet Rhiannon knew all along they enjoyed being perceived as a greater force than others. They enjoyed being set apart from the masses. Rhiannon never thought there would be a way to explain this to Astoria without her getting defensive. The fact that Astoria figured it out for herself was a sign of growth.

Astoria sighed and said, “I still don’t know where we’re going. If you weren’t with me, Rhiannon, I’d lose my mind.”

The last time Rhiannon would sleep at Quennell Park felt much like the first. She was the foreigner all over again, with a bad language guide and no money for train tickets. The lack of noise in the woodland house was more unsettling than the constant cry of pain from London’s streets, the thudding and talking of tired nightshift workers upstairs. This time, Faunus and Elly Greengrass’s knickknacks from their younger days were gone, and there wasn’t anything to look at except the tiny Foe-Shard.

“Constant vigilance,” the Death Eater had told her, even if only through mimicry.

But Rhiannon needed to sleep, too.

It was always an ugly hour of night whenever things happened, Rhiannon realised as Daphne’s screaming woke her from a rare dreamless sleep. Nothing ever happened during the many hours she was awake. Nothing ever happened when it was almost time to get up. What were the Greengrasses fighting for at three in the morning?

“ _SCRYING_ , Daphne? Three o’clock and you’re bothering me with divination nonsense! If you don’t go back to your room _THIS_ instant––!”

“Father, _please_! I saw them! I swear I saw them! They’re coming! PLEASE!”

Not good. Rhiannon groped for her wand and her Foe Shard. Her blankets hindered her, and she dragged them halfway across the floor with her trapped foot before she got free. She did not recognise anybody in the Foe Shard, but the clarity of their faces was unanticipated. So the glass really worked when it mattered, didn’t it? It was more than just something to make her paranoid.

“Daphne knows what she’s doing!” Rhiannon roared.

She shoved the Foe-Shard in Adam Greengrass’s tired face, and ran to wake everyone up. Adam was too slow. He did not respect either of his daughters for who they were, and it had cost the whole house at least five minutes… and at most the whole year.


	4. The Attack on Quennell Park

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 4 - "Spring Rounds" by Igor Stravinsky from _The Rite of Spring_ , Part I: Adoration of the Earth
> 
> With lots of dissonance, _Rite of Spring_ is not an easy listen, but as a composition, it played a role in my inspiration. In the movement "Spring Rounds," young girls in a vernal pagan festival dance the Khorovod, a circle-dance in Eastern Slavic tradition. The twist is that in the second movement of the full piece, one girl is chosen by fate to dance herself to death for the spring gods.
> 
> I wanted to match the feeling of horror in the song choice - the tone has darkened. At this point in the story, the events of _Deathly Hallows_ begin to seep into our characters' lives. The Greengrasses have not gone to war, so the war comes to them.
> 
> **Content warnings: some gore; family death**

Astoria was up and shouting of Death Eaters alongside Rhiannon shortly before the property alarms began to do the job for them. It was so urgent to wake everyone and remember exactly which hallway her parents were in. It was so foolish of her to leave their sides. At the blare of the property alarms, she and Rhiannon breathlessly made their way back to Daphne and the others. The thought of having to leave cousin Renshaw and his wife behind plagued her constantly, speaking louder to her pounding heart than the alarms.

 _We’ll come back later for them_. _We’ll leave a message somehow_. _Father will know what to do_.

It was only a property breach. Of course Death Eaters could breach the property _somewhere_ , right? The land was huge. But the mansion itself had more protective charms. They could do it. The family could withstand the assault.

“How many did you say?” Astoria panted once they reached the sides of her parents and sister.

“Looked like ten of ’em?” Rhiannon gasped.

“How did they get over the barrier, Daddy?” Daphne cried. “I thought there was an arithmanceutical code! How did they know the _code_?”

“That’s not important right now,” Uncle Faunus said, rushing up with his family behind, all looking incredibly well-rested and raring to go. “Adam, lift the Anti-Apparition charms for a second. I’m going to get my son.”

“I can’t lift the charms at a time like this, Faunus! Are you mad?” Mr Greengrass shouted, his panic emanating cold on Astoria’s skin.

Uncle Faunus’s look of pain was difficult to see. Astoria was worried about Renshaw and Gracie, neither of whom used any magic. She could imagine how Uncle Faunus and Aunt Elly felt right now. But if her father lifted the Anti-Apparition charms, there was no telling how many more Death Eaters would show up outside. Mr Greengrass cast the Amplifying Charm on his own voice to announce to the rest of the family still running through the halls.

“Ten Death Eaters are on the property. We are meeting on the landing. Everyone will link hands. When everyone is together, I will lift the charm, and we will Disapparate. Be prepared to hold tightly.”

The screeching alarms of the house suddenly overpowered his voice. Adam and Estelle Greengrass looked at each other in shock for but a moment, their hands clenching their children’s shoulders.

“Be prepared to engage,” he announced grimly.

There were so many in the family, and only ten Death Eaters. It was going to be okay, Astoria tried to think, as Uncle Faunus, Aunt Elly, Xylia, Ansel, Sylvester, his wife, and her father bolted down the stairs towards the breach. But Astoria gasped when Asenath started tailing her elder sisters.

“What do you think you’re doing, Azzie‽” Astoria shouted.

Asenath’s tattoos and black hair might have made her look tough, but she was not of age. Astoria and Asenath got along about as well as their respective Hogwarts Houses did, but to think that they would have to see each other get hurt against Dark magic…

“I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to make Death Eater filets,” Asenath spat and disappeared with her family.

“Daddy, how are we all going to Disapparate if––” Daphne piped.

“We may have to get rid of the threat first,” he said mostly to Aunt Thalie, who had just come down from upstairs with Uncle Helvetius, Artemis, Erez and his wife, all in summer pyjamas.

Those four were all armed, but when Aunt Laureline came down with Adamina, Sofronia, and Uncle Salomon, Astoria realised they had a major problem. Astoria was one of the youngest people in the family, so it wasn’t like they had to worry about protecting small children. However, Uncle Salomon, like Renshaw, could not use magic. How were they supposed to hide and protect him whilst keeping him close enough to the scene to Disapparate when the time came?

 _There are more of us than the Death Eaters_ , Astoria repeated in her head. She wasn’t even sure of how many –– over forty? But some of them were quite elderly… some were not of age… There were ten Death Eaters who managed to get through far more than ten layers of shield in her house, roaming downstairs somewhere.

Ten real Death Eaters, really in her house, and this was it. They were going to become a newspaper article like all the other dead families. Death Eaters were in the school, and now they were in her house. It was the order of things, wasn’t it? She had been fated to die as a blood-traitor for her whole life with the name of Greengrass, but with Rhiannon Clarke next to her…

Well, there were plenty worse things to die for than for one’s best friend.

Astoria did not want her mother to feel her shaking with fear, so she loosened herself from her grasp. Her mother would fight; she could not hold her the whole time. But Astoria could not sit back and be protected anymore, not with the chance that _she_ had been the trigger for the Death Eater’s arrival.

 _Pariah_ , Astoria thought. How she had willingly advertised her views to Voldemort’s supporters from the very beginning.

 _Draco_ , Astoria thought. How stupid they had been to think they could be something.

But Pariah and Draco were over, and Astoria was prepared to stand on her own against those who would kill her family and friends. That was why, when crackling sparks began to fly from the dark rooms below, and her parents ran to defend their home and family, Astoria went with them.

It became too much effort for her parents to stop her involvement in the emergency, and that was exactly how she wanted it. She wanted to prove that they had not sent her to that awful school for nothing. She had made something out of the experience that she could use to protect those she loved. She drew a quiet breath as the Death Eaters began lighting up the main floor with green. They had not come to interrogate or intimidate. They had come to kill. She tried not to think about how most Death Eaters had more time practising Dark magic than she had had on this earth.

Astoria nodded at her panic-stricken sister, who blinked tears out hard and steadied herself. Rhiannon flung off her flannel, revealing her scars from Slytherin’s basilisk and the tattoo mocking the very same creature. Astoria had no tears and no scars just yet.

Barefoot, she ran down with the crowd of family members into the ballroom. Uncle Faunus and Aunt Elly walked backwards into the room, holding off the Death Eaters there with powerful blasts. Astoria could not see the invaders, but she could see their spells. Everyone was ready with a connecting Shield Charm, and for a moment of locking arms and holding hands, it looked like they would be able to Disapparate. Astoria felt that they had won, between the hold of her sister and mother. Maybe it wouldn’t be night-time out where they would go.

There was a bright yellow flash, and shatters rang out in triplicate. A masked, hooded figure had broken a corner of their joint shields and reached to take something very precious from them.

“NO!” Astoria howled as Daphne was torn from her arms and hoisted in the air.

It was all her fault they were going to lose Daphne. She had been the one holding her. How could she defend her stupid, stupid self if she couldn’t even save her own sister? The Death Eater who held Daphne captive was choking her with force unseen, parading in front of the line of terrified Greengrasses and his entourage on the other side.

All of the black-cloaked horrors aimed their wands at Daphne, forcing an entire forty-two people into surrender. A wave of pyjama-clad arms dropped their wands without even being told. The sound echoed harshly in the bare, white ballroom, like parts of little wooden toys breaking. With burning eyes, Astoria looked to Rhiannon, who had her hands behind her head, and followed suit.

 _Somebody’s got to be doing something_ , she prayed as her sister gasped for breath.

When they were young girls, they used to see who could hold their breath for longer. Unlike their little tests to see who could jump higher, that one always got them into trouble. Daphne won the competitions, though. Daphne always won at everything.

 _Please, please, please_ …

A short Death Eater stepped forth and removed her mask, apparently of mind to address them as a superior.

“The famous Greengrasses,” she said in a tired voice. “Surely this isn’t all of you. Hm… I know. Mulciber, we’ll need to find the Mosbys and the Springhouses after this. Plenty of family connections –– the Wakelands and the Salems. Oh, and those awful Kipplings. If you’re not careful, a Greengrass will swipe you and bear you a Squib.”

“They’re all gone,” Astoria’s grandmother piped up. “Left before us.”

“Is that right?” the Death Eater cooed, twirling her wand at the old woman’s nose.

_Grandmother, don’t talk…_

Astoria could not pick where to look. Her choking sister in Mulciber’s grasp, her threatened grandmother, her petrified family. The large room felt stuffy as Daphne started to pale. Her parents were too terrified for their daughter’s life to make a move wandlessly. Astoria couldn’t do anything wandless at all, except an ounce of Legilimency if she really tried…

In staring at the horrible figures, Astoria realised there was only one Legilimens present among the enemy. This could be to their advantage if they could save Daphne first. There had to be more they could do than watch in fear. After all, only seven of the attackers were branded Death Eaters. The other three were simply thugs in dark clothes. More information… more information had to be there.

_Astoria, love._

It was almost like it was her mother’s voice. Astoria looked at her mother, whose eyes were glued on Daphne. Surely she had spoken.

_Astoria, I want you to duck whenever I move my hand. I want you to pick up your wand once I get Daphne back. Don’t be afraid if something happens to me. Keep moving. I have never used this spell before, and I need to use it without a wand now._

It was a Legilimency wavelength, just like Professor Sinistra had tried to use with her before! If Maman had been a Legilimens this whole time, why hadn’t she said anything? How long had she known Astoria was studying Legilimency illicitly? Astoria had thought her mother would be furious if she found out. Had she really accepted her this whole time?

Astoria responded with an affirmative as best she could, given that her mother had asked so much of her in only a moment. It was much easier to send thoughts to her mother than to anyone else, and Astoria wasn’t sure why that was so surprising to her. She had to keep her thoughts quiet, though, or the Legilimens would know, and everything would be ruined.

 _Daphne, dear, it’s all right_ , Astoria sensed her mother thinking. She wished Daphne could sense the reassurance, too. As the Death Eaters kept their eyes on the taunting of her grandmother, they failed to notice her mother bending her ring finger beneath her thumb tightly. She punched it forward, not speaking the incantation but thinking it with all her might…

_Avada Kedavra!_

Mulciber hit the floor hard, but so did Daphne, and the entire scene erupted into chaos. There was no light in the room, and it was so hard to see the Death Eaters. Her family, though, wore light colours that could be targeted.

Mrs Ciel-Greengrass grabbed her wand, ran forward, and brought her elder daughter back under her wing. Astoria did her best with Shield Charms, desperately casting them on herself and on any friend in range. She wondered how long she could keep it up with the bombardment of Dark magic thundering in the room. There was no way they could all link up and Disapparate with this many Death Eaters attacking. Astoria sent a Shield over Uncle Salomon, who had quickly become a favourite target, and tried to use Legilimency at the same time to the effect of a horrible headache.

Getting into the mind of the ringleader witch was one of the most jarring things Astoria could have done when she was supposed to be keeping her cool. The leader of the pack was none other than Ivory Stretton, the mother of Rhiannon’s bully and former roommate, Imogen. She wasn’t the only Slytherin connection, either. Xavier Lofthouse, the father of an older student Xander, was the horrible Legilimens fighting Uncle Faunus. Kestrel Gibbon, who had only just left school, had taken up the Dark Mark in honour of her dead father. Worst of all was Theodore Nott Sr, too old for the job but in too deep to say no. Astoria could never face her friend Theodore again if…

Her attention was brought back to Stretton, who was loudly fighting Aunt Laureline in order to get to “the dirty Squib.”

“ _Legilimens_ ,” Astoria pried, and to her excitement, the onslaught of Legilimency was ruining Stretton’s aim at her aunt. Astoria only had so much time before Stretton would find who was casting the spell. But what followed in Stretton’s thoughts ruined every hope Astoria had half-formed.

> _Rabastan says I’m foolish to work without the Dark Lord’s orders. He’s jealous that_ I _actually know how to do it. I could usurp Rabastan’s position with this move._
> 
> _“The boys say they got a story that might help,” says Bates Mulciber. “Old witch Jugson there says she knows a Greengrass when she sees one. Their Squib married a Muggle. Looks like Renshaw and Grace Greengrass and a Bob Page are living in a farmhouse in Bromyard. Own land on Burying Lane.”_
> 
> _“How funny is that? Burying Lane,” I say._
> 
> _"I think Lofthouse can milk them for what sorts of protections they got on Quennell Park. We’ll bring Jugson so he can make his mum proud.”_
> 
> _“We’ll bring more than Lofthouse and Jugson, Bates. The Squib and the Muggle won’t be any problem, but the main branch…”_
> 
> _“Right. We need good backup,” Mulciber says._
> 
> _“If they’re too afraid to leave their posts, I’ll remind them of how much money the Greengrass’s stuff will be worth in Knockturn,” I plan, “and of our duty to show blood-traitors how it’s going to be_. _”_
> 
> _It takes half the day, but we locate the farmhouse of the Squib and his wife and storm the place. The old Muggle man fell asleep glued to his television. Exactly as a Muggle would be. He’s like squashing an ant on the pavement. The Squib comes tearing down the stairs, like we’re mere home invaders. I like his face when he sees what he’s up against._
> 
> _“Didn’t count on us, did you, Squib?” I say, and I kill him._
> 
> _His body slides down the stairs, leaving only the screaming wife in the upstairs hallway. She sees her dead family below her and runs back into her room. I order my party to capture her, but I what I hear doesn’t sound like their magic. It’s loud._
> 
> _“She shot Nirys and Sid in the head with a gun! They won’t make it,” Lofthouse suddenly informs me, reading the Muggle’s thoughts even from our spot at the stair. “No matter. I got what I need out of her. Quennell Park’s barriers are based on an arithmanceutical code, and she has it to get in. Muggles are so easy to read! We can go to Quennell Park straight after this!”_
> 
> _“Go kill her then. Mind the gun,” I order._
> 
> _I hear that silly machine again, but the impact and pain that follow tells me I’m the one who’s been shot this time. It’s only my shoulder. I staunch the bleeding. I’ll live. Dark magic feels worse._
> 
> _“Go on, then, kill me –– I’ll kill yeh in hell all over again!” the Muggle sobs before I win her life._

Astoria’s eyes were raw. Renshaw was dead. His corpse was, for an eternal second, the only image Astoria saw in the room full of clambering people. He had been the one who taught her –– not just told her –– what it meant to be a Squib. Astoria had always wondered what he thought of her after it turned out she _could_ use magic. They were so far apart in age, it was hard to say. But she had always thought an apology was in order… Or maybe an apology for turning out to be a witch would have been even _less_ appropriate. But anything. Anything to thank him for helping her know she wasn’t the damned disappointment the rest of the world saw!

_Thank you for taking time out of your day to make me feel better when I was little, Renshaw. I’m sorry I’m like the rest of them after all. I won’t be stupid with my magic, Renshaw, I promise. I’ll be responsible and I won’t brag._

Renshaw. His new wife, Gracie. Her grandfather who had had no idea what was happening. All had been murdered by the people who were attacking Quennell Park now. Astoria wondered if her mother knew yet. Astoria was merely standing in a Shield Charm now, doing nothing to help like she had planned. Her Legilimency had given her the names of the attackers. She didn’t want their damn names. She wanted them all dead. Why was her family trying to hold these monsters off with _defensive_ magic?

 _Kill them. They’re really killing us_ , Astoria thought in bitter fright.

Everything Astoria knew about the Killing Curse, she had learned from Crouch Jr. You couldn’t cast it without murderous intent, and a lot of power was needed behind the spell. People could say the words, and nothing would happen. But Astoria’s mother hadn’t even said the words, or used a wand. She had killed to save her child.

With the shocked Daphne still in her arm, her mother waved her wand in a circle over her head, creating a black shield around them, bringing Rhiannon into the huddle with them and screaming for Astoria all the while. Astoria had seen Theodore use a smaller version of that spell before. She ran to her mother, parrying spells from the attackers on the way. Her father jumped to her side with Uncle Faunus –– they killed a witch named Fanny Flint and a wizard named Rel Amand with less hesitation than earlier.

“Three down!” Rhiannon announced to Daphne, who could use just about any news after what had happened to her.

Inside the black shield, it was even more difficult to see the room, which was flashing all colours and resonating ugly sounds in the escalating fight. Stretton, having blamed her string of misfires on her shoulder wound rather than the haze of Legilimency, was briefly occupied by dressing the wound Gracie had given her. Stabbing her wand deep into Mulciber’s corpse, she seemed able to restore her open wound with very Dark magic. Astoria couldn’t watch that any longer. One Death Eater, Jugson, had finally broken the defences of Astoria’s grandmother, wounding her badly in the abdomen. Mrs Ciel-Greengrass did not let the attack go unnoticed; from her incredible shield emerged a black dragon’s head, roaring enough to shake the house. The spell seemed to drain even as powerful a witch. She and her skin’s rosiness faded to white as the dragon ripped through Jugson’s body.

“Estelle!” Astoria’s father screamed, but his cry was drowned out by an onslaught from the remaining Death Eaters.

The sight of Jugson had taken away Mrs Ciel-Greengrass’s fortitude. Dark magic always came with risks, and the black shield dissipated in spite of her best effort, so Astoria and Rhiannon did their best to keep up regular shields. The power of the attackers was too much to compete with, and they could only hope to guard themselves until there was nothing left in them. In the clearing, Astoria saw her cousin Sofronia take a hit to the face by Kestrel Gibbon.

“I can’t see! I can’t see!” Sofronia screamed like a wounded bird, only bringing more attention to her. “Mum! Mum! I can’t see!”

It was not her mother but her helpless father who jumped over her, of mind to die protecting her. Astoria hated to feel it all –– how badly Uncle Salomon wanted to save his child, how badly Kestrel missed her own father. Kestrel was sweaty and unsure of her mission, removing her mask to wipe her forehead. Astoria thought perhaps her own pain would help her understand what she was doing to another family… but Kestrel’s young face set hard and she moved to kill the Squib and blinded girl.

“Av––”

“ _KESTREL_!” screamed cousin Erez, for he had watched Kestrel get Sorted all those years ago, led her to the common room, and let her off detention with a warning…

Astoria could not stop the river of people’s pain. This was what it meant to be a Slytherin, she felt as she watched her cousin lose his options in the fight against Dark magic.

Erez’s wife Hazel rushed to his side as he cried over the dead body of his younger classmate, a familiar face to him, who had lost her way. Adamina weaved her way toward her father and sister like there was no one else in the world, grabbing them and bolting toward Astoria’s group. Adamina was livid, and the majority of her blame rested on Astoria. Astoria stopped looking at her, but it didn’t help. Would she have blamed herself for the Death Eaters’ arrival if she had not picked up on Adamina’s ill feeling? Probably, yes.

“We have to go, Uncle Adam!” Adamina roared. “No one can take the others! They’re too strong!”

Astoria and her father gaped as their attention was drawn to Stretton, Lofthouse, and Nott’s ability to hold off twenty or more adults, slowly picking away at them with highly injurious curses.

“ _Uncle Adam_!”

“Mina, if I lift the charm now, there could be dozens more! We’ll never get out of here! Do you see the situation I’m in?”

Astoria’s head was spinning, but she was _finally_ able to help.

“Father, there aren’t any more on this mission! There aren’t any more trying to Apparate here!” Astoria gasped.

“Like hell there aren’t! Astoria, stay _down_!”

“Adam, she’s a Legilimens! A better one than me!” Mrs Ciel-Greengrass declared in French. “Listen to your daughter for once!”

“ _Quit talking French and get my dad out of here_!” Adamina screamed at the top of her lungs.

Astoria choked on a gasp as she realised Xavier Lofthouse was about to plant an explosive spell into her grandmother.

“He’ll kill Grandmother!” she screamed and pointed at the tall wizard with the pointed nose on his mask.

Mr Greengrass was then forced to ignore his desperate niece for the time being. He brushed Astoria’s cheek with all the feeling of a goodbye, and before she could do anything, he and Uncle Faunus went into the crowd.

“Daddy!” Daphne screamed. “Oh my God!”

Finally recovering her senses, Daphne was able to assist Astoria, Adamina, Rhiannon, and the superior witch erect shields around Uncle Salomon and Sofronia. Sofronia was still blind from Kestrel’s curse and crying into her father’s shoulder for fear of what she could not see. Astoria’s father was clear across the room, trying to do what twenty others could not against the remaining Death Eaters. Her father was angry with her for learning Legilimency. If she could do even more, maybe he wouldn’t be so upset. It was futile, even with her wand and words. Her Legilimency and her curses had their limits, and without Stretton close by, she couldn’t even pry into her mind anymore.

 _Maman, what if I’m the reason they’re all here?_ Astoria panicked the longer her father was gone in the crowd.

_Do not think things like that. This is not your war._

Language was irrelevant to Legilimency, but Astoria sensed that her mother thought in French. Astoria had gradually come to think more in English over the years unless she was actively speaking French. She wished it hadn’t happened. She wished she had known her mother was a Legilimens this whole time; she would have thought in French to make her prouder. She would have kept the uglier parts of herself buried even further, so that her mother would not have to see.

_Astoria, we will always love you. This is not your fault._

But it had to be! Even Adamina knew it! Whilst Astoria wallowed in self-pity, two of the unranked attackers broke their way through the flock of Greengrasses, leaving multiple injuries in their wake.

“Lofthouse says the fat one really is Slytherin’s Blot!” yelled the blond to his companion, charging forward.

Their names were Caleb and Don. They called themselves “Snatchers,” and they meant to take Rhiannon, Uncle Salomon, and Sofronia in one go before going for Astoria’s mother. Almost in perfect formation, Astoria and Rhiannon acted with all they had.

“ _Avada Kedavra_!”

“ _Diffindo_!”

Rather than looking at what they had done, they looked at each other. Astoria remembered the first time she had met Rhiannon’s eyes. They had been filled with tears on the Hogwarts Express. All Astoria wanted was to see her friend happy and safe. Now she had killed somebody right in front of her. Legilimency was an awful thing, Astoria decided, having unwillingly made spotless contact with her victim’s last few thoughts. She would never speak them.

“Rhiannon, I’m sorry,” Astoria said desperately, her wand still writhing at the weight of the Killing Cure. “I’m sorry. They were going to kill you.”

“I mean,” Rhiannon croaked, “yours ain’t bleeding like mine, so I guess that’s better…”

They looked away from the bodies awkwardly, as though they simply didn’t want to bring attention to a small breach of etiquette. Astoria could not think of a single thing to say to her mother except “I’m sorry,” a statement she was feeling further and further away from as she saw so many in her family fight for their lives.

 _Maman tore a man in two over there_ , she thought, but Astoria was not an adult, a parent, or a warrior. She was fifteen and still had no idea how so much hatred could have been contained in these dead bodies around her. There were only three Death Eaters left, but their power became more apparent the longer the fight drew on. These three had been able to break every charm on the property and house. They had been able to hold off not only the sheer number of Greengrasses, but the strongest amongst them. And Astoria’s father was still in there somewhere, and the more she thought about it, the more her mother did. And the more her mother thought about it, the closer they moved into the hellfire fight.

Aunt Laureline was once again holding up against Ivory Stretton, but it was all too obvious who would lose in the end, and Adamina had to decide between guarding her powerless father and helping her mother. She ran forth with several powerful blasts that ultimately did nothing, and it was hard to watch. Astoria was afraid to fire into the crowd of her loved ones and afraid to leave her mother and sister. Uncle Faunus was quite possibly as strong as Mrs Ciel-Greengrass, able to keep even a Legilimens like Lofthouse on his toes.

Father fought Theodore’s dad, and everything prickled in Astoria’s heart. If God was listening, she would have just liked to make it clear that she would take her father over her friendship with Theodore. But she severely wanted both, knowing it was too much to ask for in a world like this. Lofthouse’s voice cleared her thoughts in one sharp moment.

“Ah, this is the father of the dead Squib!”

Whatever amount of Uncle Faunus’s Occlumency was left all shredded upon Lofthouse’s announcement. Astoria, from ten odd feet away and with no eye contact, could feel Uncle Faunus’s whole being crying out for his son.

“Y-YOU––!” his strong voice broke upon learning of the loss of Renshaw. “MY SON!”

“Your defective son, yes,” laughed Lofthouse, swinging his arm at the tragic-stricken, half-baked spells Uncle Faunus cast.

They both moved to cast the Killing Curse at each other, but Lofthouse was at complete peace with Renshaw’s death and that much smoother. Uncle Faunus’s pain abruptly went silent.

Sofronia still could not see what had happened, but when everyone began to cry out Uncle Faunus’s name, she wept even louder behind Astoria, who had utterly no time to help her. Uncle Faunus had died the moment he lost his focus, and his death had distracted everybody in turn. Astoria hated that she was now thinking this way, but she had to move before she would lose her father, too.

 _Adam, no, stay focused_ , she felt her mother mentally beg, too, and they ran forward in the crowd, leaving Daphne to guard Uncle Salomon and Sofronia. Rhiannon came too, horribly afraid that one of the toughest among them had fallen. She blocked a curse flying toward Asenath, who was weeping over the body of her father. Lofthouse had begun to push through everyone, and screams of defensive incantations followed his trail. Stretton was still intent on killing everyone there.

“Stretton –– the witch –– she’s been shot with a gun! Gracie shot her, and she used a corpse’s tissue to close the wound! It was her shoulder! Can we do anything –– get her weak spot?” Astoria shouted to her mother and Rhiannon as Stretton closed in on the mourning Aunt Elly and Sylvester.

“Hell yeah we can!” Rhiannon yelped. “ _Accio bullet_!”

 _Bullet?_ Astoria wondered. _What’s that mean?_

“ _AAAAGH_!” Stretton screeched, clutching her shoulder and dropping her wand.

Rhiannon caught a small silvery seed and flung it out of the crowd. Sylvester, in the midst of trauma of losing his father and brother in one night, picked up the wand swiftly and handed it off to Grandfather, who had been Disarmed. Astoria’s mother was still as intent as ever, casting the Killing Curse upon Stretton even though she was wandless. Astoria did not blame her at all. Old Nott Sr truly shook once Stretton fell dead. He conjured that black shield over himself and ran out of the hoard of the crying Greengrasses.

“Nott! _NOTT!_ ” cried one of the bodies.

Rhiannon and Astoria spun to see one of the Snatchers they had left get to his knees. It was the one named Don. Nott Sr hoisted him up, and they scrambled for the doors to the garden.

“NO! I KILLED HIM! I––” Rhiannon shouted. “I THOUGHT HE WAS DOWN!”

“It’s okay, Rhiannon!” Astoria cried back. “Forget them if they’re escaping! We just need to Disapparate without Lofthouse cursing or grabbing us!”

It seemed everybody was trying to chase Lofthouse, which made for a slow funnel as they reached the hall. It accomplished nothing. Lofthouse took the opportunity.

“ _Imperio_!” he said as calmly as he would have if he still had nine comrades.

“ _NO_! _NO_! _ADAMINA_ , _NO_! _IT’S MUM_! _ADAMINA_!”

Astoria feared the worst as there was a crack through the air. Shoving past those she loved, she saw that Erez and Hazel had saved Aunt Laureline from being killed by her own daughter, but they had not been able to dislodge Adamina from the Imperius Curse. No one wanted to cast anything substantial on her. Mr Greengrass was able to safely Disarm his glassy-eyed niece, but even as he gained her wand, she began to use magic with hand motions. She didn’t know how to do that on her own.

Astoria felt like she was the only person in the hall looking at Lofthouse instead of Adamina’s wandless attacks. He had decided to turn and run away the same moment Adamina ceased casting offensive magic and began casting spells on herself.

“ _Petrificus totalus_!” Aunt Laureline quickly cast to halt Adamina’s potential harm to herself.

Astoria knew it was already too late. Adamina had the same black curls and the same delicate posture as always, but she had become a living bomb. This was Lofthouse’s last resort for getting a feather in his cap for killing everyone at Quennell Park. He had tried an explosive spell on Grandmother earlier, and now he put Adamina to shame by having her cast it on herself. He was bolting away from Adamina like he feared her whilst maintaining the Imperius Curse on her. All signs pointed to a very bad ending for her family.

“GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!” Astoria shouted as loud as her lungs would allow, breaking away from her father’s side. “BOMB! BOMB IN THE HALLWAY! BOMB! GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!”

In the confusion, Astoria was able to reach Adamina and cast a Banishing Charm on her to push her further down the hall away from the family. It was not that she was trying to let Adamina die, but she had to save everyone else first. In the darkness of the mansion at night, no one was able to see what had happened to Adamina or Astoria. Aunt Laureline, Mr Greengrass, and Erez were rushing up the hallway, all calling for Adamina, who was directly under Astoria’s wand. Astoria had no way of making this look better and had to act fast.

“ _Prior venare_ ,” Astoria begged her wand, but nothing was happening to save her cousin.

What would come first? Would everyone think _she_ had become the new threat? Would Lofthouse emerge from one of the rooms and kill them? Would Adamina explode?

“Astoria!” her father cried from down the hall. “What are you _doing_?”

“ _PRIOR VENARE_!” Astoria screamed violently, and her wand obeyed with relish, acquiring a taste for Dark magic that Astoria had never wanted it to have.

Adamina had a seizure, her arms reaching and shaking at nothing as her mother fell over her. Her mouth opened so wide that her jaw dislocated with a painful crack, and out of it rose a glowing ball of fire, bright enough to light the hall. It had a fiery texture and throbbed precariously. Astoria had been right; Lofthouse _had_ made Adamina into a bomb.

“IT’S THE BOMB –– GO! TAKE HER! GO!” Astoria screamed, shoving her cousin across the smooth floor.

“Wh–– ASTORIA, NO!” Aunt Laureline screeched, grabbing her daughter and trying to reach for her niece at the same time.

When Mr Greengrass ran forward, Astoria cast the largest-scale Banishing Charm she had ever done on purpose, sending her whole family back to the ballroom. Adamina was still under the Imperius Curse, and Lofthouse was still in the house. He had killed Uncle Faunus. He could still kill them in their moment of weakness before Disapparition. She had to make sure the creep died. Astoria had used this hex only once, on Imogen Stretton no less, and if sending Lofthouse’s own bomb back to him didn’t kill him, nothing would.

Astoria just had not expected him to be so close by.


	5. The Fall of Quennell Park

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 5 - "Overgrown" by Mountains of the Moon

It had been twenty minutes since the explosion. Adam and Estelle Greengrass were now the only ones still in the house, but that did not begin to cover the effort it had taken to persuade everyone else to leave. After helping to fight the fire and do preliminary searches, the whole family waited on their toes outside for the safe return of Astoria, Adam and Estelle. Her parents sought for her with everything they had. Bubble-Head Charms to prevent smoke inhalation. More conjured water to douse the self-feeding fires. Amplified voices to call for their daughter. Since everyone had pitched in to fight the high fires, Adam and Estelle decided it was finally safe enough to go further in. They were so desperate for their child. Astoria was likely injured, burned, and unconscious. She could not answer them. But she couldn’t be gone. Adam and Estelle no longer considered the fate of their home after the explosion. After all of their preparations for ensuring its safekeeping during their exile, it was the last thing that mattered. Faunus, Adam’s brother and best friend, had been murdered right in front of them. They had retrieved his body. Renshaw, Gracie, and her grandfather, all utterly defenceless, would have to be found dead by Muggle police God knew _how_ many days later. Thalie, Helvetius, Artemis, and Erez were outside with horrendous burns. Sofronia had been permanently blinded. But _Astoria_. Their little Astoria could not be dead.

“Why isn’t it working?” Estelle sobbed as the many spells they were casting failed to reveal and retrieve their daughter. “Adam, do it again.”

He prayed all the incantations he knew that could possibly bring Astoria to him. They did nothing, and Estelle stepped in.

“ _Accio Astoria_.”

“ _Accio Astoria_.”

The Summoning Charm did not work on human beings, but Estelle didn’t care. She wailed for her child over the crackling of their suffering house. Adam did not want to say this in front of his wife, nor did he want to accept it himself, but if they were to be serious about their task, he simply had to… Stepping as far as he could possibly go into the burning hallway, he wept, “ _Accio Astoria’s body_.”

Adam didn’t want the spell to work at all. But if Astoria was dead –– God forbid –– he would never leave her here to _burn_ … alone in a house full of dead Death Eaters.

 _What a horrible thing_ , he thought. _What a horrible father I am_ _to think that_.

Even with spells as grand as his wife’s, they could not fully dissipate the fires that ate the walls and ceiling. They had been unsafe for quite some time where they stood, calling for Astoria senselessly where magic had failed.

“We should have stopped her!” Estelle erupted in the fury of loss. “ _Why didn’t we stop her_?”

“Estelle, please,” Adam cried, and he grabbed his wife so that he would not lose her in the cursed fire, too.

“Adam… No, we have to keep looking! _Our daughter, Adam_!”

But Estelle could not sense any of her daughter’s thoughts with Legilimency. The smoke, darkness, fire, and tears all obstructed their sight. It was hot and hellish, and they bore it for longer than was safe or reasonable. In the end, Astoria was gone, and they had to get out of the house for their poor Daphne’s sake. Out in the garden, they silently pondered how long it would take a house so grand to burn through. The burning of Dark magic looked like such a small wound from the outside. That had been the place. That had been the place their daughter had died in pieces.

If Astoria had not recklessly tried to save Adamina…

Adam couldn’t decide if his thoughts about Adamina were evil or human. Perhaps evil and human were the same thing. He was so grateful to have his niece safe with them. But why did his daughter have to die in her place? Why did this have to happen?

Because he wanted to stay and have Astoria take “the _real_ O.W.L.s” in Britain so he could see her results and yell at her. That was the reason. He had been concerned about subjects Astoria didn’t even like, as though her image depended on it. How stupid. Nothing mattered except the lives of his family. He was selfish and stubborn, having refused to accept the threat that everyone –– and his own beloved wife –– had told him about. He had sent his owl safely along after it had delivered her test scores. And he had let his family die over his own pride.

 _Astoria… Faunus… everyone… I am so sorry_. _I am so_ , _so sorry_.

Rhiannon Clarke was still in denial. The second Adam and Estelle had emerged from the house, she began running alongside it, trying to Summon Astoria at the top of her lungs. It did nothing, and Estelle eventually went up and embraced Rhiannon. Daphne cried and held Adam so hard that she hurt him, but he took the pain he thought he deserved. All he could do now was get the rest of them out of this forsaken country.

It took a long time for him to focus enough to make the announcement to his family. His daughter had died. How could he go on?

But he had to. He had to get everyone to safety. So he revealed the first Secret –– the first location to which they would Apparate or Side-Along. He kept going to save his family because it was the only thing he felt he was good for anymore.

His dear Daphne and his grieving sister-in-law, Elly, both received disabling Splinches in the Apparition. He blamed himself for those, too. If Astoria had died a Legilimens, maybe she could hear his thoughts easier in Heaven. Maybe one day, she’d simply walk up to him, know everything, and say, “I forgive you, Father.”


	6. The Curse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Astoria discovers what lurks within her blood, and the meaning behind her family's marriages on the Vernal Equinox. A certain travelling visitor makes one last wrinkle in time...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 6 - "I Lost Something in the Hills" by Sibylle Baier
> 
> **Content warning: some gore**

Astoria seemed to have thought of all the wrong spells to use in an emergency. She had cast the Diminishing Charm on the explosion rather than having thought to Vanish the damn bomb. Even if she hadn’t managed to Vanish the bomb, she could have Shielded herself and safely escaped. But she had continued her pattern of casting the Banishing Charm, this time on herself, to get away. That had served to send her two wings down and concuss her. From two wings down, she could not reach her family without going outside.

Coming to, she crawled out the nearest window, hoping that her family had long since made their exit from the house, and dashed through the back garden, but the manor was larger than two little legs and a concussed brain could cover. Before rounding the corner, Astoria came across Nott Sr and the Snatcher, who were still skulking the premises and in a heated argument until they spotted her. Unwilling to leave the disaster empty handed, the Snatcher expected to win a hefty sum by Astoria’s capture. She moved to fight back, but could hardly make the proper wand motions with her head in so much pain. To her luck, the Snatcher was unaware of her injury and had had his fill of fighting. Afraid of what he _thought_ she was trying to cast, he Disapparated. That let Astoria know that her father had lifted the charms on the property. It was time to go.

For some reason, Nott Sr did not attempt to intercept her on her way to the front gardens. She made a final cautious glance at the old Death Eater. His face was hidden in a silvery mask that he had owned since his youth, but he had clearly begun to wince in pain. It was his left arm that bothered him –– the Dark Mark that Death Eaters used to communicate with Voldemort. She stopped moving and watched him carefully from a garden alcove.

Based on Nott’s thrashing, Voldemort was calling him urgently and angrily. Rabastan Lestrange must have tattled on Ivory Stretton’s overnight mission. If Voldemort himself came to Quennell Park now that the Anti-Apparition charms were gone, it wouldn’t matter how many Death Eaters they had defeated. Astoria had to stop Nott from touching the Mark and revealing his location, even if it meant cutting his arm off. She went tearing back toward him. To her confusion, Nott was not touching his wand to his Dark Mark but to the side of his head. He was heaving breathy sobs. Astoria’s mind swelled with thoughts of Theodore.

“Wha– Wait! What are you doing‽ _Legilimens_!” Astoria panicked, again choosing a spell that didn’t help the situation.

> _I have had enough. I have gone from being Tom Riddle’s schoolmate, to his ally, to his laughingstock, and finally to his slave. This is the end of that. But it is not death I want. All I want is for my son to have a better life than the one I have given him. I want to forget who I am and disappear._

“ _Obliviate_ ,” said Nott, and through her Legilimency, Astoria felt nearly seventy years’ worth of memories drain out into an unchartable sea.

She was shaken, and she left Nott. Finally, the Greengrasses had a window through which they could safely leave England. Astoria ran in stumbles to the front gardens, where she had been certain her family had been. There was nobody there, so she kept running. She kept calling. She went back inside, where it was much darker and smokier, and only the corpses of Death Eaters greeted her. How long had it been since the explosion? It was nearly two o’clock when Rhiannon and Daphne detected the Death Eaters. There wasn’t a clock left in the house, since all their clocks had supposedly been valuable, so Astoria ran back out. She looked up to the sky to calculate the time. This used to be fun for her, but it was impossible to do with her concentration skidding against her skull. With her concussion, she only succeeded in falling backwards into the wet grass. She grabbed something that was bleeding, and shrieked. It was a body part, an arm. Astoria screamed, handling the body part like it was burning her, trying to look for an explanation. She needed her family _now_. She screamed all the names she could think of, but her body had given up on her will, and she slid round in the dew with a disembodied arm. Its fingers were indented from rings and tipped in pink nail polish.

“ _DAPHNE_!”

Astoria’s wet cheek hit the ground. She did nothing else but lay and look. There were two more body parts showing against the ground, but they weren’t Daphne’s. The grass was twisted into mud in countless spots like feet had been dug into it. The whole plan had been to Disapparate. Maybe they did. Maybe they all made it, because none of them were here anymore. If they Apparated a long distance on short notice, there were bound to be a few injuries, right? They could staunch the bleeding –– they knew how, her family. But Daphne was never going to get her arm back. It was here in England with her stupid baby sister.

Astoria knew that she had been left behind. Her father must have lost sight of her in the explosion and thought the worst. It was disgusting and traumatising to look for clues about what had happened, but the warmth of Daphne’s arm meant that Astoria had just missed their departure. Awful. Awful. They wouldn’t have left her, but they must have thought that the odorous fire had already eaten her body.

“ _Aguamenti_ ,” Astoria called from the ground, and she made the water reach the house, but she couldn’t seem to make the water do anything.

A manor that had stood for over three-hundred years was now seeing its east side fall. The fire created an ugly brightness compared to the moonlight. Astoria tried to tell herself there was no reason to be upset. No one was in the house. Not even their silly possessions were in the house, just the beds and some clothes for the morning. It wasn’t like Astoria could live there alone and wait for someone to come back for her. Death Eaters would return to see what had happened, with or without Nott there. Her family wasn’t coming back for a pile of her ashes. But she kept the water going, so that the forest might not feel the flame after the house was done.

Astoria understood why her family had left without her perfectly well, but they had completely forgotten who they were if they had left their forest to burn. The flames were born of Dark magic and never submitted to water. They would come for the land, she knew, once her Vanishing and Containment charms similarly failed. Astoria lay back on the cool ground feeling nearly as dead as her family had thought her. She pointed her wand at the sky.

“ _Nimbus momentum_ ,” she said, hoping that a shower of rain would douse the fire the way it had doused her in the middle of class.

Rain was never that far away where Astoria lived, but when the clouds came, their tears did nothing. Astoria wiped her face and sat up to the looming figure of a man.

“ _Depulso_!” she cried instinctively for the umpteenth time, and the pressure went through the man and shot out a window of the house.

The man wasn’t a new threat or a confused Nott Sr, but the ghost of Quennell himself, come to watch Astoria’s mental collapse on the lawn.

“This is the first time you have ever screamed upon seeing me, dearest,” Quennell said.

He removed his hat and looked down at her with empty eye sockets. Through him, Astoria saw the fire ravaging the manor where she had been born and raised.

“It’s Dark magic. It’ll take the forest,” was all Astoria managed to say.

Quennell staggered across the twisted, muddy Apparition tracks and someone’s missing leg and walked directly into the flame. Astoria lost sight of him, and it wounded her even though she knew he was long dead.

“Quennell, please…”

They were the only two Greengrasses left. Astoria did not know the first thing about Apparition by herself. Even if she could Apparate, she could not Apparate internationally. If she could Apparate internationally, she still had no idea where her family had gone. They could be anywhere on the planet, incorrectly mourning her death. She didn’t think herself worthy to be mourned alongside Uncle Faunus, Renshaw, Gracie, and her grandfather. She was not an innocent victim, nor was she a hero. Astoria did not know whether she had been so fervent about saving Adamina out of love or out of a desire to cleanse herself of blame. When the flames in front of her abruptly sucked back into the manor, Astoria expected an explosion. This time she could not react. However, when the flames disappeared, it gave her far less relief than she had thought it would. Quennell’s feet and side showed first through blackened stone, and he emerged with as earthly a walk as ever.

“Are you all right, sir?” Astoria cried out.

Quennell might have been through the whole ordeal with her the way he sighed. He sat down in the grass at her side. Astoria had never seen him behave this way from the time she was a child. His preternatural distance had always been hard for her to scale, and why she had always tried so hard to be with him she could not say.

“What a preposterous thing to ask, Astoria. The question is how will you ensure _your_ safety? There is very little I can do to help you. Unless, that is, you want to stay with me.”

“I…” Astoria breathed. “I don’t have an answer yet, sir.”

They sat quietly in the sour scent of dissipating smoke. She should have cast the Bubble-Head Charm ages ago, when there was still a point to. Most matters had boiled down to “oh, well” by now, though. She could only hope she wouldn’t die from smoke inhalation.

“Sir, thank you, but how did you put out the fire?”

She had asked it because it was so essential for her to have someone to speak to, but she may have done better to have left the subject alone. Quennell leaned forward, opened his maw, and blew out cinders past his lips. Quennell’s evident pain was casual, as though he had made its infernal acquaintance in centuries prior. Astoria had always thought ghosts could not feel physical pain, and it bothered her deeply.

“I m-must tell you that your family Disapparated after they could not find you. They took Faunus’s body.”

“Our family,” she tried to correct him.

“I tried but was unable to tell them that –– that you had survived. Please forgive me. There are so few in your family who acknowledge me.”

Quennell’s hoarse voice had been charred further still, and he coughed fresh burns onto his palm. Whatever he had done to save the forest was akin to neither natural nor Dark magic. Quennell seemed so real there sitting beside her that she half expected his clothing to be grass-stained and wrinkled. He breathed very heavily and fidgeted against the uneven ground. He groped for his hat with his free hand, and when Astoria reached for it to give it to him, she went right through it. Yet her hand made genuine contact with his, and the touch was simultaneously so hot and so cold that her skin briefly lost feeling.

“Quennell, sir?” she winced.

“Yes, dearest?”

“You’re unlike other ghosts I know.”

“I am something different.”

“Are you… in Hell, sir?”

Quennell drew his hat over his open eye sockets.

“Not quite.”

He seemed so alive that she felt less alone. However, Quennell did not exactly make himself ideal company.

“Were you attacked because of Renshaw the eleventh’s marriage to the Muggle woman? I had believed the world had changed since my time,” Quennell said.

Astoria didn’t know the answer, and she didn’t want the guilt. For she had shared her earliest memory with Draco Malfoy, a Death Eater. She had told Draco that Renshaw was a Squib and that her parents had invited him over to comfort Astoria when she used no magic. Had Rabastan Lestrange been able to extract Draco’s memories? No, most people knew Renshaw was a Squib long before that. It really had to be the old Jugson woman that set it all off. It had to be.

 _Renshaw, I’m so sorry_.

“I don’t know. They murdered Renshaw’s family before coming here. Not that much in the world has changed.”

Quennell paused, and then said, “You know your family quite well.”

“They’re _our_ family, sir,” Astoria huffed, refusing to be alienated.

“Do you hold faith that they will maintain the Vernal tradition?”

“What should I care‽” Astoria reacted to his sore, distant voice. “I can’t imagine too many are going to be in the marrying mood in the middle of an exile! After what happened tonight… Faunus the ninth was killed, you know! My Uncle Faunus!”

Quennell contorted his face. His voice boomed out with smoky breath, cinders spitting out onto his clothes. The rain did not put out their glow on him, just as it had not stopped the house from burning.

“I am merely trying to hold on to the hope that no more shall die before their time!”

He stood up, rubbed his loose eyelids, and started to walk toward the woods. Astoria was furious. Quennell had lived and died well before her time, but to her, he had been a lifelong friend. And now, with the house half-burnt in the middle of the night, an Obliviated Death Eater traipsing about the property, and no else left, he was going to leave her there.

“You’d prefer to run off than to bother to tell me what that means?” Astoria called. “How like a ghost! I could die out here anyway, so I guess I’ll come find you when I’m dead!”

“Do not insult me, Astoria!” his booming reply came. “Do you not wonder why I am forced to walk these woods when I did not choose to remain as a ghost?

“Oh, I’ve only wondered all my life! You think now’s a good time?” Astoria retorted.

Quennell was panting hot air, his well-adorned clothing glistening in the moonlight. He repeatedly turned to look behind him in the forest, a mark of fear that should not have existed in the dead.

“I sought far too much out of life, and the forest and I are now one and the same.”

“Well, this is all news to me,” said Astoria moodily.

“Your wounds are fresh from the tragedy. I would not have you disturbed by my own troubles at a time like this. You, for one, are young. As far as the rest of the family goes, there is nothing I can do now.”

Astoria finally got off the ground. Even though whatever Quennell feared was back in their sacred wood, she ran over to him, closer to the darkness.

“You can’t say all that and expect me not to ask. Tell me. I hate when people hide things from me,” she said firmly, trying to meet his covered face.

“Astoria, I know that we have been at odds, but you must understand I want only the best for you. You know nothing about the magic this land holds over you. Please, simply respect it. I do not know what the future holds for you after tonight. If I could help in ways that preserve your life, I would.”

“Yes, well, I think you can help by just spitting it out. I’ve got no plans right now and no one to help! I’ve got eight dead bodies in my house! Nothing’s going to ruin my night more than it’s already ruined!” Astoria shouted.

Quennell reached out an blurry hand and touched her cheek. The heat and coldness of his being once more caused slight pain on a living body. It was no wonder why his presence killed the garden flowers.

“Are you able to talk about Faunus so soon? It partly involves him,” he asked.

Astoria’s tears fell at the name, but she said resolutely:-

“If I know Uncle Faunus, he wants me to be strong about it.”

“Then please listen carefully,” Quennell rasped, and Astoria wished she could give him a drink of water.

“I carry a curse, Astoria. Faunus, in his youth, explored the forest often and encountered me many a time. In fact, I might not have appeared to him so much if he did not have a penchant for trouble. To stop his reckless carving of trees, I decided to divulge the secret. Faunus, a second-born, only revealed the nature of my curse once, to his second-born, Renshaw. Why, dear girl, you wonder? Because Renshaw, in taking a Muggle wife, was tempted not to marry on the Equinox. Faunus and Renshaw died tonight without revealing the curse to anyone else. Thus it is solely back in my hands.”

Astoria tried to remain level-headed. Uncle Faunus and Renshaw both knew about this so-called curse and had both been murdered. They had both been second-born, like Astoria. It was very difficult to process.

“The curse… it gets them killed,” she choked. “You tell them about this curse, and they _die_? Why do you tell _anybody_ then? Why would you do that? Is part of your curse that you have to curse _us_? Is that why Maman and Father tried to keep me away from you?”

“You have already assumed the full nature of the curse in spite of everything else you know. This is because I have not appointed you Secret Keeper on the side of the living,” Quennell said coldly.

“I-I don’t want to be the Secret Keeper if that means I’ll die! I’m second-born too! Listen, I might not have a plan for what I’m doing next, but it’s definitely not to get murdered by Death Eaters!” Astoria exclaimed, backing away from what she had got herself into.

How could Uncle Faunus and Renshaw have died from some stupid curse from the 1600s? Impossible! She saw them both die, and their heroism was real, their deaths were brought about by human evil, not supernatural fate. She needed at least _that_ comfort.

“You always make conclusions prematurely, Astoria. I speak to second-born children because their lives are proof that their parents have _survived_ my curse. Indeed, becoming the Secret-Keeper sharply _decreases_ the chance that you will die from the curse. However, it becomes your responsibility to see that no one in your family falls to it. The knowledge of the curse and the guilt of failure could rest on your shoulders all your life.”

Astoria looked back at the rainy blackness in her house. She had really been trying to become a better person. Someone responsible, who could protect others. It had led her to do some horribly crazy things in one night. She yearned for her family, and she wanted security, but neither of her wishes would be granted. Quennell was confined to the land, and with her family so far away, there was no way for them to know about the curse. They might never find out how to protect themselves from it if Astoria did not become Secret Keeper now. Someday, she swore, she would find them. She would ensure their safety. They had so much to deal with as it was –– they didn’t need to be dying from some old curse. So instead of jumping to conclusions, she considered her next move seriously.

“I chose to become a Legilimens, and that’s given me plenty of knowledge and guilt,” Astoria said. “There’s no guarantee we’ll ever be back to see you. I’m the only one you can tell.”

“You are correct about the situation, but I will still not put this on you if you do not wish it,” Quennell said. “You are in so much pain as it is.”

“I’ll do anything for them. M-Maybe that’s why I’m stuck here,” she nodded.

“Very well. Do not divulge this information to anyone who does not absolutely need to hear it,” Quennell said.

He began to walk into the woods. He did not directly beckon her to follow him, but she had to in order to hear him speak. The compression of the forest’s darkness was not the only test of Astoria’s will, for the longer she followed him, the less she felt like she had lived here her whole life. She had become the foreigner, watched by eyes she could not see.

“First, please tell me what you know about me. The legend your parents gave you about Quennell the first, if you will,” Quennell said with his back to her.

“You settled in this forest in the 1640s, after saving it from the attack of a dragon. Because, erm, you knew the forest was sacred. That if, erm, you made a family here, the land would bless you.”

Astoria said this in a whisper, because she felt like Quennell was not the only one listening anymore. She kept the light from her wand barely bright enough to see where she was walking, because she did not want to see more.

 _Just follow Quennell_. _Just look at Quennell_.

“All lies,” said Quennell, shaking his head sorrowfully.

Big surprise. Her parents had been sheltering her with false stories from the time she could toddle.

“My dear girl, this magic you feel in the forest is not sacred. It is ravenous, and it is alive. This land is my soul’s container, a cistern of my sins. There was never a dragon or a sacred nymph, or anything in that folktale.”

The air of the woods had never felt quite so hostile. She realised it was Quennell causing the disruption that he so often did in their flowerbeds. They were not especially far into the thicket, so it bothered her that she had never encountered this particular clearing before. In the centre was a wild apple tree, nearly eight metres tall. Its roots were pale and unnatural, and their placement was the reason for so little growth surrounding the tree. Quennell, who should have been an immaterial being, had to step round the roots to reach the centre of the tree. The wind from the rains Astoria had conjured rushed through the tree’s branches, and Quennell caught an apple in his hand without looking.

“If you do not wish to be Secret Keeper, now would be the time to make it known.”

He tossed it all the way over to her. Astoria still stood at the edge of the clearing. The truth was that she had no idea what she was doing anymore. Reality had started to slip. An hour ago, she had had her family with her. She had been sleeping, scared yet excited to start a new life in the morning, away from the war. With everyone gone, all she had managed to do was to walk into the woods with a ghost her parents had always told her to avoid. Could she really do this?

**~*~**

Scorpius Malfoy had only minutes to spare, and he had to make them count. Like any good Slytherin, he had agreed to be part of the Time Turner ploy not only for Cedric Diggory, not only for the war, but for his beloved mother. And tonight –– if his skipping through time could be called “tonight” –– was his only chance to change history _without_ having to go back and undo the damage later. This was the only way.

Bolting through the grounds of Quennell Park, Scorpius didn’t have any more time to ponder his existence and his duty, but there were things he already knew. Things he had already mulled over during this entire Time-Turner fiasco. What had stuck out to him the most was that his very best friend, Albus Potter, was not born in every timeline they had manipulated. But Scorpius was. He was _always_ born, in _every_ timeline, no matter what series of events played out in the war or otherwise. That was why he could still do this now, why he had fought so hard to do this. He didn’t place the weight of destiny on himself, though. His inevitable existence wasn’t a testament to him being the saviour that he would have liked to be. It was a testament to the deep love his parents had. They would always be together in one crazy, crazy way or another.

But when Scorpius had realised with relief that he would always be born, it came with some unhappy knowledge. Because merely existing, merely being created by a bunch of chromosomes, didn’t mean one always turned out the same _person_. He had seen himself as a crass, arrogant, and racist fool in enough timelines already. Whether the war was in Harry Potter or Voldemort’s favour had not changed his mother’s death at the hands of a blood curse. Sometimes, her death just happened earlier depending on how much she had expended herself. However, the side that won the war significantly altered the fate of his father, Draco, and thus affected Scorpius, too. No one else in any other timeline could take the credit Astoria could for shaping Scorpius into the wizard he wanted to be. No one.

Oh, but hadn’t he learnt his lesson about meddling with time? Yeah, he had. The long, painful way. The trauma-inducing way. The way where he watched people die. But he realised that Mother’s choice tonight could have prevented even _that_ from happening.

As if he wouldn’t go back for Mother. _As fucking if_.

Mother had always made sure Scorpius was brought into the very folds of existence, so the least Scorpius could do was to help save her adult life. With charms a-plenty on his body, he silently approached the spot where Mother stood in the forest. He counted on the soul of Quennell Greengrass not to raise alarm. This was what they both needed. Scorpius beheld his mother’s young, tattered, and frightened form, and it was all he could take not to reach out to her and stay with her here forever, destroying reality and time.

Mother was about to reject the Fidelius Charm offered to her, and Scorpius had to intervene. Because in the world he had come from, by the time she _had_ become the Secret Keeper, it was far, far too late. Mother’s determination to be with Father had led her to elope him in every timeline Scorpius had ever seen. And she just couldn’t do that without finishing things with stupid old Quennell Greengrass first. She had to know what she carried in her blood, and she had to know _tonight_ , before anything could possibly happen differently.

Even though he already had no time to squander, Scorpius wasted more and hated himself for it. But he had this terrible feeling that if he encouraged Mother to be the Secret Keeper now, the war would be much worse for her. The payoff would be greater, though, greater for her and everyone. So Scorpius drew a hood over his head and stayed just out of view. As Mother was about to put the tree’s apple down, he spoke a gentle request.

“Please, for me.”

Mother, already so frightened and alone, looked round, unsure of whether she was losing her mind or in danger once again.

“Uncle Faunus?” she uttered in sharp grief, and then she cried because Uncle Faunus wasn’t there, and there were no more words in the air.

Scorpius, for a silly moment, felt a bit proud that his voice had deepened enough to sound like Uncle Faunus’s ghost, and for an even sillier moment, he hoped Rose Granger-Weasley would notice one day.

But Scorpius silently stepped further back still. He felt Quennell’s ugly gaze upon him. But Quennell said nothing. Perhaps he couldn’t because of what he was, or could it be that they had reached an understanding? Tonight, Astoria Nesrine Greengrass carried the fate of _so many people_. Tonight, she was more than just Scorpius and Draco Malfoy’s world.

Mother thought she was hearing things, hearing Faunus’s voice, because she didn’t know Scorpius. But hearing the desired company was enough for her to persevere. Scorpius watched her bring the fruit back to her face. This would be bad for her. But then she would be happy.

They would all, one day far from now, be unfathomably happy.

**~*~**

Astoria had been standing at the coast of a sea of panic for too long, trying to avoid the crashing waves. She drew a deep breath to steady herself. Uncle Faunus had been at this spot in his youth. Maybe he had not been here in the middle of the night, and maybe he wasn’t here now, but he had been here before. Even a Gryffindor like himself probably would have thought twice about the balance between bravery and safety. But perhaps he did not appreciate the enormity of the knowledge handed down to him at the time. Even though he was gone, he and Astoria still shared this earth and this secret. It was not Eden she stood in, so knowledge would not harm her. She gripped the apple and bit it. It dripped cold with magic. A Fidelius Charm, born of Quennell Park.

Between illusion and reality, Astoria saw visions. A thousand of Quennell’s eyes peered at her through the trees. The roots began to wring their way through the ground like a swimmer’s arms above water, and the wind howled in torture. This place was not holy as she had been taught. What they all felt had been a fiend. Astoria fell backwards, her elbows digging into the ground in an instinct to save her head.

“This is what I have done, my dearest. I have split my soul. I cannot pass,” said her ancestor.

“Quennell, please…” she begged for the visions to go away, and then there was nothing to be seen except an odd tree and the phantom she loved. The wind had stopped, the eyes were gone, and the roots sunk to rest. Quennell began to speak his secrets, seemingly unable to move as he did.

“There exists a spell so unclean that the evillest of Dark practitioners would not even utter its name. This is Black magic, named _Horcrux_ , which binds my soul. My body died, and what you see of me is not a ghost I willed, but what I slit from my soul and left behind. As you have suspected, I exist on the very same plane as you. This is the immortality I thought I desired. When I settled in this forest, I fought no dragon and protected no native population. I did not begin with the heroic life you are so told. I felled everything in my way and built a home beyond the highest of luxuries. I sought to be above others and to perfect Dark magic in solitude. There was no better place to be alone than this expansive wood. It enclosed me then, as it does to this day. In spite of my greatest efforts to enchant the forest and be alone, one day I saw smoke billowing and followed it. A witch had made a settlement in my woods to hide herself from Muggles. Although she viewed her self-segregation as the result of misunderstanding, I despised Muggles. I could not send her out of my woods, she who had broken all of my walls in search of a safe place to live. In time, she wed me. We chose the auspicious wedding date at the time, the Vernal Equinox. In bearing a family, we were forced to interact with society once more. We both made names for ourselves as teachers of natural magic. Though my wife was also a user of the Dark arts, it was I who craved more.

“The temptation of creating a Horcrux to preserve myself beyond my time collided with my arrogance, and I prepared the greatest tree in the forest to be my vessel. To create a Horcrux, you must kill another person in the coldest of cold blood. As this breed of magic is violent and volatile, control of the spell escaped me once the vessel was prepared. I intended to take the life of a Muggle who had no significance to me from a nigh village. However, the Black magic I had churned within my body melded with my hatred of their kind, and warped my senses. Unbeknownst to me, my wife had followed me into the copse to see what I was doing. To discover that I intended to kill a defenceless Muggle threw her into desperation. As I was to do the deed, she cast herself between… and she died by my wand whilst I was possessed with the frenzy from my own magic. Thus, this Horcrux was created from a most fetid deed, the killing of my own wife. The Muggle escaped, though it was later said he went insane.

“I enucleated myself with my wand once I saw what I had done to the love of my life. I ran into the house and tampered with the memories of our children, leading them to believe that my wife and I had simply succumbed to dragon’s plague. Then, in direct opposition to the immortality I had sought, I killed myself beneath this tree, where I had killed my dearest. Because I had severely tampered with my blood in order to create the Horcrux, and used the flesh of my flesh to split my soul, my magic lives on as a curse. Rather than become immortal, I only succeeded in cursing my bloodline to feed my Horcrux.

“I discovered both the existence and the nature of the induced malediction in our blood a long time after my crime. The maker of a Horcrux can resurrect to living form if fed enough bodily material from three key sources: the user’s family, the user’s subjects, and the user’s foes. You and your family, Astoria, are _my_ family. Thus, my Horcrux –– this tree –– naturally hungers for you. It is not _living here_ that increases your risk; it is that you were born of my blood and subject to the Horcrux.

“As the legend of auspicious wedding date fell out of fashion, it became necessary for me to divulge the truth behind the Equinox and appoint Secret Keepers within the family. For even though the Equinox is tradition, traditions as specific as this one rarely last through the centuries as this one, necessarily, must.

“The endless guilt of sapping my own kin’s life is my punishment and sorrow, lest I forget my actions. Any attempt to continue my accursed bloodline will wither away the body to the point of death, at which point you will feed my Horcrux, and I will strengthen. I do not wish it, yet I cannot undo it. There are only two ways to overcome this malediction: either do not bear children or, miraculously, simply marry on the Equinox.

“Because of my dearest wife’s pure sacrifice to prevent my murdering of an innocent, the date we joined together in marriage became the escape from my Horcrux’s curse. _Love_ , not counter-curses, is the strongest protection against Dark magic. Because of my wife’s actions, the requirement to break the curse is so mercifully simple that very, very few have failed to follow it. Only those who wed outside of the Equinox will feed my Horcrux, and I must watch them die. I can feel physical pain on account of being a Horcrux, but the spiritual torture is insurmountable. My wife’s love will give couples at least two children in honour of the children we had left behind, and of recognition that they have survived the curse. I thank you, Astoria, deeply, for being the bearer of this information.”

Astoria dropped the apple she held. Her brow was so furrowed it gave her a tension headache. None of this made sense. Horcrux? Bloodline curse? And Quennell was a _murderer of his own wife_? It was hard to imagine, but she had been happier when her greatest concerns were that she had lost her uncle and cousin and was left in the country by herself.

“This –– this is horrible!” Astoria screamed. “We – we – we have this family tradition we’re taught to love, and it’s all so we don’t get slaughtered by a… what’s it called, a Horcrux‽ No, _your_ Horcrux! How dare you! How could you _ever_ …‽”

The fact that she was yelling at a being who was stuck between spirit and human for actions he committed roughly three-hundred years ago did not strike her. She kept screaming at him.

“You’re saying my parents only had _me_ because they married on the day your wife’s leftover magic is more powerful than yours? My parents didn’t know any of this! What if they tried to have Daphne without marrying on the Equinox because of the war –– or without marrying at all? Father would just _up and die_? To feed your immortality‽ How dare you!”

Quennell grabbed his head with both hands and howled.

“The First Wizarding War saw many Greengrasses succumb to my curse, since the Secret Keeper at the time, Calhoun, had been murdered, and Faunus was unable to reach his extended family abroad. It is lucky that the Equinox is celebrated as a sacred tradition in its own right. Some did not follow it… My apparition became stronger with their deaths, and I can now manifest at will, as you see me now. I will never forgive myself.”

As he said this, nearly ten tree roots sprung up from the ground, speckling Astoria with wet dirt. They tangled in circles round Quennell, reflecting his emotions and acting as evidence of his unbreakable connection with the forest. He shed tears that pooled in his eye sockets, and he had to keep dropping his head forward for them to drip out onto the ground.

“So what, is this the tree where your soul is bound‽ Why has no one cut it down‽ Plenty of us have been Secret Keepers since then, is that right? Plenty of us have known what it will do to us!”

“Astoria, I have _begged_ many a Secret Keeper to destroy the parent tree of this spell and take me with it! You do not know the level of my _remorse_! A Horcrux cannot be killed by normal means; it was fed by human bloodshed!”

 _That’s absolutely sick_.

Quennell scrambled to sugar-coat what he had just revealed.

“Remember, marrying on the Equinox guarantees at least two children if the parents wish it. An easily avoidable curse comes with my dear wife’s blessing! Don’t you understand? The love she had, you see, has made us one of the largest and greatest Wizarding families in Britain. Yet this is why I am ashamed to consider myself family to you. _I_ am the one who has put you all through this. _I_ am not worthy to walk this Earth.”

“ _Greatest family_! –– _Britain_ ‽ They’re all gone now! Everyone! It’s just _me_!” Astoria pounded her chest. “ _Just me in the fucking woods_!”

After a terrible night, _this_ of all things was what brought her out of her panic and into a mad fury. She stormed round the tree that was part of a forest she had tried to save. Why? Because she had been taught the forest was sacred. Why? Because Secret Keepers have been building up this lore of lies for over three-hundred years to keep the family safe and dumb and happy. That was the very sort of thing she hated most.

“My _Squib_ cousin married on the Equinox for you, and he still died! He died tonight! Are you going use him in your little ‘Horcrux’ too? Drink his blood‽”

One false step, and Astoria tripped on a root, scraping herself badly. She thought either the Horcrux tree or its soul, Quennell, would try to drink the blood right out of her wounds, but nothing moved.

“You’re disgusting,” Astoria cried, and she didn’t have anywhere to wipe her nose and tears except her sooty, sweaty, and mud-stained pyjamas.

“I know what I am,” Quennell said, turning away so she wouldn’t have to see the holes he’d put in his face drip again.

In swelling rage, Astoria beat her fists at the apparition’s back, but it only caused her that prickly sensation in her hands. She couldn’t stop. The betrayal was too strong.

“I loved you!” she wailed. “You were my friend! Clearly, _I never got out much_! How could you do this‽”

Quennell said nothing; she only heard him sobbing in the wind.

“Well, Quennell, you were right. All of that ‘are you sure you want to be Secret Keeper’ stuff. It makes _perfect_ sense now.”

Astoria leaned against the tree defiantly because there was nowhere else to lean, but she couldn’t exert her superiority over it. Who was she going to make the Secret Keeper when her time came? Was it wrong that Uncle Faunus had not told Aunt Elly? Would it be wrong of her if she couldn’t tell her future spouse, either?

If Astoria had a child, how could she put them through this after years and years of thinking the Equinox was a fun, special time with family instead of a curse-breaker? Renshaw had learnt as an adult, so maybe that would be okay. Astoria could tell a family member that was more mature than she was now.

Astoria wondered what her family was doing without her. Had all their injuries been treated? Had they stopped the bleeding in Daphne’s arm and helped her recover? Was Rhiannon managing her supposed death? Would they all treat Rhiannon properly, as dear as she was to Astoria? Who was already old enough to get married, and would they still do it on the Equinox so far from home? Artemis, Xylia, Ansel, and so many distant cousins were of marrying age, but maybe it would take them a while to recover from the trauma. Somehow, some way, Astoria would be able to reach them in time, encouraging the celebration of the Equinox no matter what. But what could she say to insist upon Equinox marriages without alarming people? “It’s important to uphold family tradition in times of strife,” or something like that. Sure. A load of rubbish, just as it had been handed down to her.

Astoria balled herself up on the ground and cried herself to exhaustion. She might fall asleep in the woods and become Horcrux food or whatever the hell. What difference would it make? What did it matter? She shut her eyes, shivering, but the environment was not conducive to even the most restless sleep.

“Quennell, are you still there?” she groaned.

“I cannot leave, my dearest. This is where I go when you do not see me.”

Astoria dragged herself off the ground.

“Is there a reason for the waltz?” she asked, glaring at him.

“Pardon?”

“ _I said_ , is there a reason for the waltz? Quennell’s Waltz? It’s choreographed with arithmancy. Is it all just some Horcrux repellent?”

Quennell was so confused by her question that it brought him out of his wallowing.

“No. They originated with my elder son’s love of arithmancy. His name was Quennell as well. His dances eventually became the waltz you know today, and it is he for whom the composition is named, not for me. Why ever do you ask at this time, Astoria?”

“I don’t know! Perhaps I’d like to know that not every last thing in my life is out of control!” she shouted.

She kicked the tree Quennell and his wife died under. It did nothing. She decided that if she was going to die, it wasn’t going to be anywhere near this Horcrux nonsense. She would start by making her way back to the house and getting overnight supplies and food together. She did not know what would come after that.

“Astoria…”

“Oh, what the hell do you want now?” she hissed.

“The outsider has made his way into the manor. He appears ill and does not know how to leave,” Quennell rasped.

“Oh, Nott? He’s not ill. He panicked about You-Know-Who and Obliviated himself. There was a lot going on, so I, erm… left him…”

 _I have no idea what I’m going to do_.

“Do bear in mind that I can protect this land, but I cannot protect you. You must find someone you can trust,” Quennell advised.

“No kidding,” Astoria said, and she made her way out of the vast forest.

Quennell had flung the word “trust” out there like it was a real thing.


	7. Theodore Nott Senior

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 7 - "My Silver Lining" by First Aid Kit

It was tiring on the arm to always be on guard. Astoria’s wand was so finicky that the idea of switching to her left hand did not even occur to her as her wrist grew sore. She made her way across the front gardens with a measly Wand-Lighting Charm. The gardens were not meant to be enjoyed from this angle, running out of the woods. They were designed and trimmed to greet visitors at the gate with colours of the season. Quennell had made his way through some of them, though, and they were shrivelled and dead.

Once she passed the Splinched limbs that she could do nothing about, Astoria considered her options for dealing with the dead bodies in the ballroom. She could Shrink them and bury them outside. She could Transfigure them each into a small bone, like Crouch Jr had supposedly done with his father’s body. She might Vanish them all, but that was extraordinarily hard to do, and she wouldn’t feel at peace with that, even though they were some of the worst people in the world.

Astoria was much better at Shrinking things than Transfiguring them, so she settled for that option before she walked through the open doors of her empty home. The echoing had been there for months since Father had begun to clear out the rooms. It followed her, reminding her that she was alone and that her house might never be occupied again. She ignited the chandelier in the entrance hall. She thought it would make her feel better, but it only brought her attention to the holes the Death Eaters had blasted through her walls for the fun of it. The damage to the main level had gone unnoticed as her family fought for their lives. It was yet another thing for Astoria to discover alone. Behind the staircase, the mouth of the dark hallways opened mazes to her. She peered down the east wing, the place where she had “died.” The stench of smoke would cloak the rest of the house in time.

She stepped in the ballroom that held so many memories. Every visitor remembered their time at Quennell Park. The ballroom had seen so many celebrations before it had seen tragedy. It missed its music, its family. Astoria lit what lights were still intact to do her ugly job and groaned.

There was nothing left for her to do. The door of the back balcony had been shattered in battle, and hundreds of sinewy black roots had crawled in from the woods, splitting the floorboards and reaching like tentacles in the room. The bodies of all eight Death Eaters were gone, and not a drop of blood remained. The Earth had taken them back of its own accord. Astoria ran out of the room and up the staircase. Up, away from the roots of the ravenous Horcrux.

She turned on as many lights as her wand would reach. The more time that passed, she knew, the more obvious her magic would be to the Ministry. She could be arrested for casting underage magic, and then what? Astoria had never once thought to contact the Ministry about the emergency because there were Death Eaters there, too. There was no help anywhere. She only had so much time left to use magic at Quennell Park before the adults’ remnants would fade, and her Trace would show.

“Nott! Nott! Where are you? I know you’re in here!” she shouted.

Astoria had never dealt with an Obliviated person before. She had read that some variations of the spell affected both prior memories and the ability to learn new information. Draco had once told her a rumour that one of his D.A.D.A. teachers had Obliviated himself so badly that he was committed at St Mungo’s.

“Nott!” she yelled, using an Amplifying Charm as her father had done.

Nott Sr came limping down the west stair. He held his wand and his Death Eater’s mask with both hands, like he wasn’t sure of what to do with them. It was the first time Astoria had seen his face without Azkaban numbers under it. His aged features would not have resembled Theodore’s even if they were young. Theodore must have taken after his late mother.

“Good gracious, how do you know my name?” Nott said.

So he still knew his name. That was a promising sign of the rest of his faculties.

“Oh, you’re about that age! You must know my son, Theodore, is that right?”

“I…”

“I am named after my son, you know!”

 _Ah_.

It was in Astoria’s favour that Nott had messed himself up, but if she had to work from square one, it would only get harder and harder to make it out alive.

“Something dreadful must have happened here! Do you know anything about it? I saw you out in the garden, didn’t I, Miss?”

Nott’s wide, curious eyes and air of concern made Astoria seethe.

 _Something dreadful_. _Your people murdered my family, you stupid old man_.

“There was an explosion,” Astoria coughed. “You don’t remember anything?”

“No, I don’t. I hate to say it, young lady, but I’m not even sure where I am. It’s such a grand house. I almost couldn’t stay outside. I was wearing this mask, and I thought perhaps I had been at a masquerade party here? There was a lovely ballroom…”

 _Masquerade_. _Okay_.

“There was a party, yes,” Astoria stalled. “That is when the explosion happened. It was Dark magic.”

“It was _what_ now?” Nott asked.

“Dark magic. You know. Bad magic.”

Nott shook his head vigorously.

“Er, how old are you, young lady? Were you hurt? Where are your parents?”

Astoria narrowed her eyes.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Well, you look like you’ve been hurt or crying. And you’ve been pointing that stick at me like you’re afraid. I can help you look for your parents. I’m certain they made it out if someone with my old bones managed to. They’re probably young and fit.”

Astoria quickly sized up Nott’s mental condition. So her wand was a “stick,” and he was acting as though he were a good person.

“Can you still Apparate, Nott? Do you remember how?”

“‘Apparate?’ Is that something I should know?” he chuckled, unable to control himself. “I must have taken quite a hit to the head. Perhaps I’ll remember soon.”

“Hm. Can I see those things you’re holding, Mr Nott?”

“Certainly. But they must have been the party trinkets. I doubt they will help.”

As he handed off his mask and wand, he hissed in pain, gripping his left arm with his palm. Astoria watched him closely.

“How long have you been hurting there?”

“Oh, I’m not sure. I must have been burned. You’re not burned anywhere, are you?” he asked sincerely.

Astoria had several burns that paled in comparison to the pain from her concussion.

“No,” she said.

“Good. I’ll have a look at what’s happened here,” he said, lifting his sleeve. “…Well, that’s odd.”

Nott grew more distressed the longer he looked at the Dark Mark, which, to him, was an ugly, painful tattoo he could not make sense of. Astoria pursed her lips, improvising quickly. Although he could not Apparate, she would still need an adult to get to safety, and he was all she had at the moment.

“It’s exactly as I thought!” she exclaimed convincingly. “You’re the Marked One!”

The jangling thoughts he had left in his head made as little sense to Nott as to Astoria, so to her relief, he decided to listen to her.

“Sorry, I’m the what?”

“The Marked One! You can use Light magic like me!” she said.

“I… can?” he asked as all the wrinkles in his forehead crunched. “What? What _are_ you talking about?”

“It must be how you found the wand in the first place!” Astoria duped him. “Here, take it back and say, ‘ _Lumos_.’ You’ll see!”

She handed the wand off to him again like a wailing baby, and he had no choice but to take it. Astoria took advantage of his general state of confusion to get the old Death Eater on her side before he started making any decisions for himself.

“ _Lumos_ ,” he said. “Oh! It lit up! Who did you say you were again?”

Astoria couldn’t use her real name once she left Quennell Park, so she wasn’t about to give it to Nott. She had no decent way to explain how they were both magic users without him trying to use it independently.

“I’m your fairy godmother,” she said.

Her choice of words was purposeful. She had recalled Flora’s commentary on the term used in Muggle motion pictures. “Witches” were usually fiends in the Muggle consciousness; it was magic from fairy godmothers –– whatever the hell those were –– that saved the day in children’s stories. With no ability to Apparate between the two of them, no broom, and no Floo powder, Astoria and the old Nott would need to traverse Muggle territory. She could use his memory loss, age, and talk of “fairy godmothers” to seem helpless and in need of transportation.

“Godmother! You’re fooling me. How old are you? Is this some sort of illusion?” he grumbled, rubbing his temples.

“Ah, the Marked One would be able to see through such an illusion…” she played along. “I am over three-hundred years old.”

In another situation, with another person in front of her, Astoria would have given herself away by laughing at her own ruse. Nothing was funny about this. The man in front of her had taken the easy way out of his crimes as a Death Eater, when only hours ago he could have murdered her and her family. He was her friend’s father, which was the hardest part of it all, because she had to ensure the old man’s safety. Able to quickly name ten ways Nott Sr had made Theodore’s life miserable, she also had her own reasons to hate him now.

It was late July, so Astoria knew the sun was due to rise on Quennell Park about twenty minutes after five o’clock. There was no light yet. Nott Sr had some magic to relearn, and she had a grudge to ease if this was going to work. She walked behind him, taking him to the east wing. They were only one floor up, so the damage was quite severe. Astoria knew that most things damaged with Dark magic could not be Mended, so anything that had been damaged by the explosion would need something stronger. She thought back to the books she had studied with Rhiannon and the twins in place of Umbridge’s useless class.

“Mr Nott, don’t step so close to the drop-off,” she huffed as he peered over the ledge of the charred floor and into the sooty disaster below. “Please move your wand –– like so –– at the edge of the floor and say ‘ _Regenerati_.’”

Eager to see what else he was capable of, Nott obeyed, and thankfully, the floor was repaired as well as it could be. The water damage from the rain Astoria had brought was another story and would require dozens of Hot Air Charms per floor. She had Nott repeat the spell along all the walls in each damaged room, up above them, and in the window frames. Then she ushered him up to the third floor to do the same.

“ _Regenerati_ … _Regenerati_ … Say, Miss. Whose house is this? Where is everyone from the party? Did they get out safely? How did you know I was here? Er, _Regenerati_.”

Astoria decided to give him her great-grandmother’s last name, since there were not any of them left in the country, and Nott would likely forget anyway.

“This house belonged to the Springhouse family. Four died from Dark magic. The rest managed to evacuate. They lost track of you, though, and thought you had died. I knew you were here because the forest speaks to me. I appear as you wish me to, and I have not seen my true reflection since I was very young.”

Nott grew a sad look.

“Four… from Dark magic…? That’s terrible. I couldn’t use this wand to stop the explosion or anything?” he asked.

Astoria grimaced, “It was not your time, Mr Nott.”

Still gloomy, he said, “I suppose if you appear as I wish you to, I’m thinking of my son. He’s really about that age. I only have the one. I’d like to find him and tell him I’m all right. His name is Theodore.”

“We can certainly do that. As the Marked One, you have other responsibilities first.”

“Right…” he said, looking back at his arm as they went up to fix the fourth floor.

“You must never directly touch that Mark. It burns you because it contains Dark magic. You were the only one to withstand the blast directly. Your survival of Dark magic means you have been Marked, and I am to guard you for the time being.”

“Do you have a name?”

Astoria’s nails dug into her palm and said, “My name is Grace.”

“My name is Theodore Nott.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Who set off the explosion?”

“A Dark wizard named Lofthouse.”

“Lofthouse… Lofthouse… what’s his first name?” Nott thought hard.

“Xavier Lofthouse.”

“Hmm… I feel like I should remember that! Did he get away?”

“No, I got him,” Astoria said frigidly. “Fix that window.”

When they were finished with the upper levels, Astoria took Nott downstairs. The main floor had seen the most fire, but she vaguely feared the roots of the forest would shoot up from the ground and take them to the Horcrux after what she had seen in the ballroom. She stood on the last stair for quite some time, studying the wet floor with aversion bubbling in her stomach. She had no idea how well Quennell could control his Horcrux. Ultimately, she made Nott go first. She wasn’t above that. Nothing happened to him, so she followed. After fixing the front rooms, they would have to walk in the ballroom to finish the job. It would be best to leave the roots alone.

“What’s happened to the floor here?” he asked.

Astoria did not owe Nott an explanation. The floorboards were still cracked and splintered in snakelike trails, but the roots themselves were gone, back to feeding the tree. Astoria shined light in the cracks, trying to ensure nothing was trapped beneath the floor. There wasn’t a trace of what had happened.

 _Blood of the foe_ …

“Mr Nott, point your wand at the floor. You can use a different spell here that’s less draining,” she concluded. “Say ‘ _Reparo_.’”

“ _Reparo_ ,” Nott said, and the floorboards joined back together and returned neatly to their places. Astoria moved on.

There it was, ground zero, where her father had last seen her. The stench stung her nose, and she did not recognise anything. The house was only bones and stone here, and in certain places, they walked more outside than in. There was one corner that dropped off completely into the cellar. There was nothing left of Lofthouse’s body, and Astoria was glad for it, because he would have killed Adamina in the same exact way. She wondered how Adamina was doing now with her broken jaw. If another spell would have done the trick without hurting her, Astoria would have used it. She hoped Adamina was not thinking of her as a hero. Quite frankly, Astoria was still angry with Adamina for thinking her relationship with Draco had been the downfall of Quennell Park. Whilst Astoria directed Nott in the sequence of repairs, she at last had a chance to consider what had really happened that night.

Ivory Stretton, Imogen’s mother, and old witch Jugson were the ones with the idea to attack the Greengrasses. Ivory could have considered the assault long overdue, since the Greengrasses were notorious blood-traitors. Or she could have picked up the idea from her daughter, who was certain to have told her stories of having to share a room with Slytherin’s Blot. Imogen had seen the friendship between Astoria and Rhiannon over the years, especially as it had become public with their band, Pariah. Did that make it Astoria or Rhiannon’s fault? Absolutely not.

It could not have been clearer in Stretton’s memories that she was acting without orders. Rabastan Lestrange, who had advised her against it, was the closest connection to the Malfoys. The plan to attack Quennell Park had not been born at Malfoy Manor, no matter what Adamina thought. There had not been a Lestrange or Malfoy present that night, and the motley crew of people whom Stretton recruited each had their own interests that had nothing to do with Astoria personally. Three of the attackers were merely bounty hunters in it for the money. The two whom Gracie had shot in the head were fairly new recruits, and although Astoria had not discerned their inner motives, they likely just wanted to make a name for themselves. Nott, Mulciber, Lofthouse, and Flint had been Death Eaters for most of their lives, but _something_ had happened very recently that had stripped them of their rank. Ivory Stretton brought Kestrel Gibbon along to “avenge” her father. Patrick Jugson came because his mother had given them Renshaw’s location. That was how it all went to shit.

Renshaw’s group was going to be the last to arrive at Quennell Park. Renshaw’s things had arrived in the post before them, but no one thought much of it, since a Squib and two Muggles weren’t expected to make it on short notice. How foolish they all had been.

In trying to wrench the blame from her own shoulders, Astoria could not help but place it on others. She clearly remembered the night Mrs Malfoy had told her mother to leave the country. That had been Christmas Eve in 1995. Well, the remnants of July 1997 were dawning upon Quennell Park. There was no excuse for the delay, except Mr Greengrass had wanted his daughters’ O.W.L.s to be from Britain, from Hogwarts. And he wanted to save their _possessions_ , of course. He made sure all their valuables left the country before they did. And whose idea was it for Renshaw and Gracie to live unguarded in a predominantly Muggle town? Gracie hadn’t had a drop of Occlumency in her brain, and everything Renshaw had told her about the protective enchantments to make her feel better swirled about freely.

 _If he hadn’t married out of Wizarding society_ …

Astoria shook the unwanted thoughts out. Renshaw and Gracie had been murdered because of that same breed of ideology. Astoria’s Occlumency would not have stopped Lofthouse, either, so there was no point in feeling that way.

“Everything’s looking good, Grace. What a beautiful place this is,” Nott called from one of the restored rooms.

Astoria stepped into the room, answering to poor Gracie’s name. This had been the place where Draco had heard her crying over Philippe at the Christmas banquet. If only her problems now were as simple as crying over a boy.

“You should have seen it before the damage,” she said.

Nott looked in awe at the repairs that magic had made. Astoria could not imagine why a blood supremacist like him had willingly erased his knowledge of magic. Upstairs, she grabbed Uncle Faunus’s big suitcase, covered in stickers from his travels. It hurt to hand it to Nott, but she wanted to take it with her.

“Point your wand here –– no, here –– okay, make a figure eight and say ‘ _Capacious Extremis_.’ No, no, you’ve done it wrong.”

“Well, Grace, why don’t you do it? I can’t remember a lot of things,” Nott protested.

“Because I can’t right now, all right?” Astoria said. “Keep making the figure eights until I say.”

It worked the second time. Whilst Astoria packed food, toiletries, and the clothes her family had left for that day, she tested what other memories Nott had left. He remembered that he lived in Falmouth, Cornwall, but couldn’t think of his address. He told Astoria that an automobile had murdered his wife and asked quite seriously if it had involved Dark magic.

“Er, no, not Dark magic…” Astoria said as sympathetically as she could manage. “The automobile probably had a driver.”

“I see. My wife’s name was Rupilia. And Yaxley, that was her maiden name. And I do believe our marriage was arranged… Yes. But you wouldn’t know it! No, you wouldn’t know it. I loved her very, very much. Such a splendid woman. Bookish. She read to Theodore all the time. He liked her voice a good deal more than mine, see! Our son Theodore, he was reading encyclopaedias at six years. Our Theodore. We were always so proud.”

Astoria nodded periodically at Nott. It was difficult to judge what items she would actually need on the trip. There were odds and ends left over from her family that seemed impossible to do without now. Uncle Faunus’s pipe. Her mother’s hairpin. Her father’s silly beard comb, which she definitely wouldn’t _need_ , but…

It was the hardest to leave her parents’ room. She saw their blankets strewn all over the floor, and a candle was still burning from when they had first awakened to the emergency. She put it out.

“Do you remember your parents?” Astoria asked for the hell of it.

“My parents… why, yes. I do.”

Astoria happened to know about Nott Sr’s parents from the genealogy records that his father had taken great strides to make public. His father went by the fitting name of Cantankerus and was the author of the Sacred Twenty-Eight books. Nauseatingly, Cantankerus’s wife’s maiden and married name was the same. However, Nott couldn’t think of his parents’ names, remembering them only as “Mother” and “Father.”

“You know, I do think my family had some magic after all!” was as close as he got to any genuine recollection.

On their way back downstairs, Astoria came across something glinting on the floor. It was Rhiannon’s Foe-Shard, dropped in the chaos. It seemed so tiny that it was a wonder how Rhiannon had discerned any Death Eaters at all. She probably felt quite scared not to have it in a new country after what had happened. Astoria picked up the frame, and Nott saw it.

“This looks like a portrait miniature. Why aren’t there any subjects painted?”

“It’s defensive magic. Your enemies will appear when they are nearby,” Astoria said, thankfully spotting no one in the glass.

That meant they could head out soon. She left the suitcase with Nott and changed into the clothes she would have worn to her new home that day. So much for that. Since Nott was in that ridiculous Death Eater get-up, she made him put on the outfit her grandfather had left. Astoria was comfortable enough to walk in front of Nott by this point, and it was fortunate that she did, for when she opened the front doors, Quennell was standing right on the threshold in all his glory.

“ _Egad_!” Nott exclaimed, dropping the suitcase onto his foot.

Quennell bowed and removed his hat for Astoria, as if they were still on those terms. Nott shuffled past him with a hand over his mouth, and Astoria shut the door. Just as she was thinking that there would be no way to stop more Death Eaters from coming, Quennell gave her a hard look.

“Are you leaving me? I will use my magic to protect the house.”

His whisper was hot in her ear.

“Protective enchantments did nothing at all to save us,” Astoria responded.

“The blood I received from the fallen foes will hold Quennell Park,” he uttered.

“Oh yeah? You’ll use that blood to come back to life again with your Horcrux tosh and help me?” she challenged. “Why didn’t you protect us with this trick when it _mattered_?”

Quennell gave her a very disapproving look, and said, “I have no assisting potions to regenerate my Horcrux; thus, it has taken much blood for me to do merely this.”

He placed his hand on the front doors with a solid smack. A collection of roots shot up from below the front terrace, coiling round him and merging with the wood on the double doors. It was not pleasant to watch.

“So this will protect the manor how?” Astoria asked in a high pitch.

“In the event that the forest is breached, which I do not foresee happening, there will be a blood offering required before entrance to the house by any means.”

“I’m sorry, that’s it? Any Death Eater would be willing to make that –– they could hurt Muggles and do that! Look at me, I scraped my knee and I have a blood offering!”

“My dearest, it will take eight separate sacrifices of magical blood to get into the forest,” Quennell revealed rather indifferently. “I see my former self in those Death Eaters and wish nothing less than their destruction if they dare to draw near again. However, there is no way for them to know the price of entry without trial and error, and it is unlikely they will try. If I recognise someone in our family, of course, they will enter with no such sacrifice.”

“Oh, is that right,” Astoria scowled.

She tried not to think very much about the eight Death Eaters’ bodies that the forest had already taken. It was a challenge to discern between what was necessary and what was Dark. With her security stripped and only a few days’ worth of food on her, the distinction would continue to blur. Quennell looked at her closely.

“And what of this despicable wizard––?” he asked, incensed.

“His son needs him to be a father for once,” Astoria said firmly. “I’d like to give him that chance –– you know, the one _you_ didn’t take. I’ve already made up my mind not to harm him.”

“Very well,” Quennell said. “Y-You have, of course, always known best…”

Astoria shifted her weight uncomfortably and bade Quennell good riddance.

“I’m going to catch a train and try to contact someone I do trust. As you said.”

Quennell rubbed his flat, hanging eyelids in disconsolation. He only responded, “Please come back to me,” and faded into the air.

Astoria followed Nott on the long woodland path to the stone wall at the edge of the property. She very rarely came this way. Usually, she used the Floo network. The wrought-iron gates had been opened by the Death Eaters. How many times had her father pointed out that there was a “Q” rather than a “G” at the centre of the gate to guests? That abridged legend of Quennell Greengrass was one of his favourite stories to tell. But Father did not know the man, and he had refused to acknowledge that the soul haunting Quennell Park was the idol he spoke of.

“What’s happened?” Nott gasped. “The gate –– the forest! Is this what that phantom was speaking to you about?”

As they stepped onto the countryside road, the only thing that remained visible of Quennell Park was the gate, which had instantly rusted and became covered in vines due to the enchantment. Behind abruptly overgrown grass, Astoria saw only hilly pastures. There was no forest in sight; there was no home. It would have even fooled a wiser witch than she.

“Speaking of which, Grace, what are Death Eaters? Are they users of Dark magic? Why did that ghost use their blood? Why did they attack? Is it because I’m the Marked One? Will the Springhouse family be able to return home with everything like this?”

Astoria pressed a hand to her forehead. Her impatience was genuine, but it served her well as part of the ruse she had built.

“Yes, the Death Eaters use Dark magic. Lofthouse was one of them. Never mind about the man you saw. I’ve taken care of everything… _Nott_! Didn’t your wife’s death teach you anything? Get off of the road!”

Nott hobbled back in front of her, looking in all directions in profound fear.

“Not everyone uses magic like us, Mr Nott. Put your wand away for now.”

“Where are we going, Grace?”

“Battle.”

“We’re going into battle? Won’t I _need_ this wand?”

“No, Mr Nott. Battle. The town.”

“I live in Falmouth.”

“Yes, Mr Nott, I know. That is clear across the country.”

“How do we get there?”

“We are looking for a road called Penhurst Lane.”

“I see. That will take us into Falmouth?”

“…Nott, listen,” Astoria said, grabbing his arm. “Do you know how to catch the Knight Bus? The bus for wizards? Do you remember anything about it at all?”

Nott was baffled by her question, but Astoria hadn’t got her hopes up in the first place. She had never been taught how to catch the bus because, as her father had put it, “We _never_ use that riff-raff-ridden earthquake” and “the wrong sort practically _live_ on it.”

She looked up and down the road, wishing that simply thinking of the bus would do the trick. It absolutely did not.

“All right. With no bus, broom, chimney, or Apparition, we’ll need to catch a train for us to see your son. This is, as you see, a dirt road. To catch a train, we have to first reach a paved road. That will lead us into the town of Battle. It is more than an hour away, since we don’t have a broom. Once we’re in the station at Battle, I can find a map there, and I’ll figure out how far we can travel from there. Muggle trains could be very different from what we’re used to.”

“Model trains?”

“ _Muggle_ trains, Mr Nott. Trains that do not run on magic.”

“I see! If we had a broom, this would be much easier. My legs are old.”

“My legs are short, so between the two of us, let’s try to make it there alive, okay?” Astoria pressed him onward.

The sun at last was beginning to feel warm, and Nott’s enthusiasm to see his son made him kick up dirt on the side of the road. They had not yet seen a soul.

“Grace?” he asked warily.

“Yes.”

“When you were speaking to the phantom, why did you say that I wasn’t a father when Theodore needed me? That can’t really be true. I remember so much about him.”

_You went to prison for attacking children in the Department of Mysteries, you oaf._

“I had to give the phantom a reason not to take your blood, too,” Astoria lied through her teeth, and left him no choice but to accept that as the answer.

She stopped at her church to see if anyone was there to help her, but the stained glass was mostly broken, and the vicar’s house had been raided. It looked like he and his family had escaped, but since Astoria had not drawn out that memory from Stretton, she could not know for sure. Bitter and helpless as she walked past her family’s grave plot, she wouldn’t let Nott’s feet touch the ground there. She wondered if Quennell reached his nasty Horcrux over to this ground, too, to feed on their deceased.

When they reached Penhurst Lane, the feeling of progress began to dissolve on the long road. Astoria told Nott to use his wand as a compass and to quickly put it away. They headed east on the road. No people yet.

“Grace?” Nott asked again.

“What?”

“Do you know when my Mark will stop burning?”


	8. The Hard Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 8 - "Trains" by Porcupine Tree

Astoria crouched behind an old weed-covered fence whilst Nott sat her grandfather’s nice clothes right in the mud, terrified. An automobile had raced past them on the country road, and Nott hadn’t taken it well. As they sat out the nerves, she told him to conjure water for them to drink. They were drinking out of poorly-conjured goblets at the edge of somebody’s field, which might be considered trespassing. Astoria kept watching the house for any people who might be watching her. The noise and wind of the passing automobile had not been a pleasant experience for her, either, nor was the look the driver had given her. She tried to think of automobiles as large, noisy brooms. There would be more of them as the morning drew on and as they travelled in more populated areas. They would have to get over it really soon.

“Mr Nott, people drive autos. We’ll see a lot of them.”

Nott was snotty and red-eyed.

“ _My_ family’s never driven one of those cursed things. No one in my family. Never.”

“Listen, Mr Nott, I know it’s difficult to deal with this awful memory. It’s a crime what happened to your wife. Right now, though, we need to get to your son as quickly as we can. Do try to look at it another way. If we drove automobiles, we wouldn’t be walking.”

“No, you’re wrong! If I remembered how to _fly_ , we wouldn’t be walking!”

“You can’t fly without a broom regardless. We need to go. Here,” she said, helping him off the ground. “Are you sure you don’t recall the Knight Bus?”

“Wait!” Mr Nott exclaimed, nearly leaping into horse manure. “I do remember something about the Knight Bus!”

“You do? That’s excellent!” she gasped.

“I remember the bus driver was arrested for being a Death Eater! And do you know what else I remember?”

“Er… what?”

“That he wasn’t one at all! There is a whole unit of Death Eaters on a, erm, a ‘transportation operative!’ And they put some sort of spell on the bus driver, and… and… and they’re monitoring broom traffic and Portables and the Floos! I remember!”

“Portables… _Portkeys_? Well, that means they’re all over the Department of Magical Transportation! Last I saw, they were still in the broom closet. I reported this myself, and the Aurors did nothing… I can’t believe this!”

Astoria was mainly talking to herself, but Nott listened closely, trying to make sense of his fragmented memories. There was no point in sulking over the Knight Bus anymore if it only led to more Death Eaters. She had such a long way to travel on foot that it was incredible how her parents had ever got into the habit of saying they lived near Battle. Walking off to the side of the road was dirty and uneven, but there was no telling when the next automobile would zip by. At last, they reached an intersection. The road in front of them was larger and had painted white lines in a uniform pattern.

“Does this road go to Falmouth?”

“Er, yeah,” she lied. “Please give me the directions again.”

Nott set his wand in the grass, saying “ _Point me_ ,” and gestured behind him. That meant they would have to make a left.

“Please don’t walk so close to the road, Grace.”

_Says the man who let Gracie get murdered and tried to kill me this morning._

“Now, I told _you_ that some time ago,” she nagged.

Astoria entertained a fantasy of him getting his memories back so she could really tell him what she thought –– no, _show_ him. However, the longer she fantasised revenge, the more afraid she became that his memories really would come back. It had been a slap in the face to see her brilliant father struggle against this stupid old warlock. Some warlock he was now.

No matter how many second looks she took at the buildings they walked past, there wasn’t a single Wizarding residence or business to be found. Muggle places were very flat and rectangular, like shoeboxes with windows. They kept nice gardens, but Astoria could feel in her bones how much damage the very road she walked on had caused to the land. Cars were zooming past them every five minutes.

 _Where do_ you _have to go that_ ’ _s so damn important_? she scowled at a particular blue automobile that roared with arrogant speed.

“ _Point me_ ,” said Nott without having to be told, and they changed roads again.

This road made Nott especially distressed, since a neat row of hedges prevented them from walking in the grass, and the traffic only picked up. Astoria and he started walking at the edge of Muggle properties at that point, since it wasn’t like an Intruder Charm was going to set off.

“Are we in Falmouth?”

“Nott, _please_ try to put two and two together. We have just arrived in Battle. Do you even remember Falmouth, or are you merely spitting that word out?”

Nott was ashamed and did not answer. Astoria encountered many numbered signs she did not understand. When she saw a conveniently-placed bench, her feet decided it was time for a break. With the suitcase on her lap, she snacked on granola and oranges, sharing food with Nott without comment. She was very hungry, but in sitting and resting on the roadside chair, she kept thinking of her sister’s severed arm lying in the grass with Quennell about. She packed up her food and watched the Muggles drive by. All of Astoria’s wars were irrelevant to them in hedge-lined suburbia.

“Grace, say, is that the Knight Bus?”

It wasn’t the Knight Bus. It was blue and white and smelt like chemicals, and it was slowing down right in front of their seats. A Muggle bus could work well for them, because the driver would certainly give good directions. The door to the coach slid open with a squeak. Astoria walked up to it to speak with the driver. His breath evoked coffee.

“Can you take us to the nearest train station?”

“Ah, you going to a, er, festival somewhere?” the driver asked, keeping a special glance on Nott.

“Yes, actually,” Astoria agreed with a planned smile, because whatever explanation the driver came up with was what he was most comfortable with.

“Let’s see… that’ll be two-ten each.”

Two-ten? Two-ten… Two sickles could be two Muggle pounds, right?

Wrong. Very, very wrong.

“Listen, Miss. I’ve seen people try to put just about everything in that slot over the years. If you’ve got some place to go, don’t fling that play money at me. I’m tired, all right, but I ain’t stupid.”

“This is real silver, though. I’m sure it can be exchanged,” Astoria argued.

“Psssh,” said the driver crossly, trying to start a conversation with Nott. “Sir. Sir, is she with you? Is this your granddaughter? Ah, forget it!”

Astoria was forcibly ushered off the smelly bus, and the door squeaked shut behind her. That really did it.

“Nott, stop that bus!”

“Er, er…” he fumbled with his wand.

“Say _Immobulus_!”

It worked. The bus driver had not seen precisely what happened, but he certainly wasn’t opening the door for her now.

“ _Alohomora_ ,” Astoria hinted to Nott, wishing that she was at least seventeen years of age. To her ire, Nott’s Unlocking Charm failed on the automated door.

“Oho, I remember this one much better, Grace. _Open Sesame_!” cried Nott, and the bus door busted off and flew into a tree.

“How did you remember _that_ spell?” she yelped, storming the bus.

“It was always my favourite,” Nott said simply.

The coffee-scented bus driver looked at them with his mouth open and his hands over his head. Muggles weren’t allowed to see magic. Good thing he had just started his route. It was only him. How fortunate.

“Say _Imperio_ and let’s get this over with,” Astoria instructed.

The bus driver became much more pleasant about taking them to the train station after that, although there was a close call with another automobile when Nott’s spell went too deep.

“You have to give his mind some leeway, Nott! It’s not like _you_ know how to drive this thing!” Astoria said urgently. “You don’t even know where we’re going!”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

Astoria was certain the journey would have taken them half the time if the bus driver had simply accepted the sickles. When they reached the station, she had to think fast with an increasingly sleepy brain. The bus driver had seen them tear the door off, so she had to do something about that. The train was bound to only accept Muggle money too, so she needed enough to cover the fare. Because of the Statute of Secrecy, she couldn’t formally exchange her cash without going to Diagon Alley. She would have to steal. With careful instruction, she had Nott relieve the Muggle of the Imperius Curse and put him into a light snooze. She grabbed all of the papery Muggle money out of his wallet and had Nott duplicate it with countless Doubling Charms. She didn’t trust Nott’s hand to Obliviate the bus driver, so maybe he would just think that he had hallucinated the whole thing from lack of sleep. Besides, if the Ministry was still doing what it was supposed to, she would have been in Azkaban by now.

Battle Station was humming with summer tourists, all ready to try to figure out where King Harold had lost his eye and, more importantly, where to get the best fish and beer. Nott watched them placidly, unable to detect their vices. Prior to this morning, Astoria had only encountered one Muggle since learning Legilimency. It was Gracie, of course, and although her goofiness had been hard to follow, she was not morally bankrupt like the people spilling round Astoria were. It hurt to know that whilst one man had spent his savings travelling here to visit a sick friend, another was going to use the hotel telephone to call his secret mistress. It hurt to know that everyone always had an excuse for themselves, yet they would blame another person for the same action. With so many Muggles around, this had all come to Astoria in the same breath. The swell of the general public.

At the ticket station, Astoria discovered that to get to Falmouth, it would take four transfers. The worker was helpful, but the wealth of information he had given Astoria about the routes overwhelmed her. How were they supposed to change trains for a six minute ride in the heart of London? Every time they did, they’d have to use more duplicated money, stand in more ticket queues, and be near more, more, and _more_ people. Astoria thanked the worker, but she did not buy the tickets she needed. She pulled Nott aside by the washrooms as he protested fervently.

“Would you let me speak‽” she shouted, catching the attention of several who did not think a girl her age should ever speak to an elder that way. “Nott, if we get on that train, we won’t be in Falmouth for _eight hours_ , providing we don’t get lost. We have to get to your son before the You-Know-Whos do.”

“Very well,” he grumbled. “Tell me what to do.”

Somewhere in this awful crowd there had to be a wizard. The tricky part was standing in a strategic spot. Ultimately, Astoria decided to stay near the washroom entrance. She brought Nott down to her level and whispered directly to him. They weren’t going to hurt anybody, she announced first, but they weren’t going to be nice, either.

“We’re looking for an adult witch or wizard so we can Apparate.”

“How do you know if there is another wizard here?” Nott asked.

“I don’t. The odds are less than one in ten people. But we have a crowd, so…”

Her eyes caught a popular walkway on the platform, and she got an idea.

“Nott, you have to point your wand there and say _Repello Muggletum_.”

“Th-The whole area?”

“Yes, just sweep the whole area!” Astoria said urgently.

Hiding his wand in his sleeve and sweeping it across the walkway, Nott said, “ _Repello Muggletum_ ,” and suddenly an entire horde of people started turning away from the spot, thinking they had somewhere better to be, or something they had forgotten. All except one: a wizard in a business suit with too wide a necktie and thinning brown hair. Astoria and Nott ran up to him.

“Now, what is the meaning of this‽” the wizard snapped.

His name was Dillon Washbourne. He was thirty-one years old, and his Occlumency was Muggle-esque. He was visiting the Wizarding community in Battle to trick the elderly into buying “Death Eater insurance.” Astoria did not like him. She used the soft, high voice she used on teachers who weren’t Professor Sinistra.

“Please, sir, we’re in a crisis. My grandfather has been hit with a Memory Charm, and I’m too young to Apparate. I need to take him home. Can you please Apparate us to Falmouth, Cornwall?”

Nott didn’t need to make his case for being Obliviated; his gaze had been off for hours and he held his wand like a quill whenever he wasn’t told otherwise. Yet Washbourne refused to help.

“No, no. I’m here for work. Good luck to you,” Washbourne said as though she had begged him for money.

“Sir, please!” Astoria tried again. “It will only take two minutes. Please! We’re at least seven hours away, and I’ve never used Muggle trains before. I really do need your help!”

“Look, I said _no_ , all right! I’m busy. Call on the Ministry or something!”

“The Ministry has been compromised,” Astoria said desperately.

The only thing that comment did was give Washbourne more ideas for sales pitches in his cruel scam. Even though the Muggles were bypassing where they stood, many could still see them argue. She had seconds before her confrontation with this wizard would have genuine witnesses. She had to change tactics immediately.

“Ugh! Fine, you asked for this, you filthy half-blood,” she pantomimed. She turned to Nott, saying, “Lift your sleeve and show Washbourne here who you are.”

Nott was stunned at her abrupt change. He put his wand in his mouth like a dog bone and drew up the sleeve of his cloak to reveal the Dark Mark, still black and pulsing with Voldemort’s calls. Washbourne didn’t even think to draw his wand. His whole body tensed. They escorted him outside the station, behind the cars.

“How’s your Death Eater insurance working now, hm? Hope you have some to your own name,” Astoria taunted, finding humour in a thirty-one-year-old being too scared to think of ways to escape a minor and an elderly man. “Can you take us to Falmouth or not?”

“I – I’ve never been there. Please. I’ve certainly never Apparated there, I…” Washbourne stammered. “You can use Legilimency, right? You know I am telling the truth! Please!”

“Where is the closest you can safely get us?”

“To- to Truro,” he answered. “I’ve worked there before. Please don’t hurt me. I’ll take you both there, I will.”

“I _know_ you will,” Astoria pressed, trying to eradicate the escape plans from Washbourne’s head. “Because if you are lying to me, I will know. And if you think about shaking us off on the way there, I will know beforehand, and I will Splinch your head off.”

That really did the trick! Astoria gave Nott Sr a crash course in Side-Along Apparition (which basically boiled down to “do _not_ let go for any reason”) and they were off. Never a good experience, the speed and pressure of the Apparition was that much worse on her without sleep. They landed on the pavement outside of a Wizarding residence, the clearest place Washbourne had remembered. Having fulfilled his promise to take them there, Washbourne now only thought of ways to contact the authorities. He even considered the Muggle police.

“Get ready,” Astoria said to Nott, and the warlock had his wand ready. “Swish to the right and say _Confundus_.”

“NO! NO!” Washbourne yelped, but the spell hit him squarely, and he climbed into a rubbish bin by the kerb.

He would probably be fine. A real Death Eater would have killed him. Astoria and Nott treaded carefully up to the Wizarding residence, and she hoped that she wouldn’t need to use the same plan of action on the resident of the house at which they stood.

An elderly wizard answered the door after three minutes of their waiting. He happened to be losing one-hundred Galleons a month to Washbourne. He used a walker, so Astoria wasn’t going to ask him to Apparate. She was not sure how long Voldemort took to cattle-brand wayward Death Eaters’ sons, but she felt like she had already saved some time in the quest to get to Theodore.

“Good morning, sir. My grandfather and I need to get to Falmouth, and we don’t have any way of getting there. Can you tell please us where the nearest Muggle station is?”

“You mean you’ve got no broom?” the wizard said.

“No, sir. We’re in a bit of a crisis.”

“You need Floo powder? I bought ten bags before Diagon Alley started getting… you know…” he offered.

“No, sir. You-Know-Who’s people are already monitoring the Floo network, and we’d rather not have them see us. I’m a Squib, and he’s been hit with a Memory Charm and can’t recall how to Apparate.”

“Oh, I see… that is quite a crisis. Let’s see if I can remember… Well, do you see that road there? That’s a wee alley. If you cut through this neighbourhood, you’ll find River Street. Erm… hum. Stay on that road and follow the pavement till you reach Ferris Town. Once you’re there, you’ll be looking for a road called Richmond. That will take up you to the station. Mind the automobiles especially there! They’re bloody everywhere, and––”

“Sir, excuse me, but if I get lost, which is the best direction to follow?” Astoria asked.

“Er, that would be west,” said the wizard. “I’m certain you’ll find the tracks.”

“Thank you very much, sir. Oh, I wanted to tell you… Did you happen to purchase Death Eater insurance? My grandfather did, and the salesman attacked him with the Memory Charm. He’s been paying double what he signed up for each month. I’ve just been warning people of the scam. It’s all fake.”

“Oh my…” said the wizard.

It wasn’t a very sturdy lie, but it was the best she could do without alarming the old fellow. Whatever he did with his knowledge of the scam, she wouldn’t know. Astoria named the streets in her head over and over. Aloud, she calmed Nott down about the heavy traffic. Traversing a small amount of city was much harder than their long countryside walk to Battle. The twenty-five minutes it took for them to find the train station felt like hours of stress, and when Astoria walked in, it was another whirlpool of raw Muggle thought. The worker at this station, at least, did not look at her like she was wrong to try to catch a train to Falmouth from here. The fare was reasonably priced, a concern Astoria had never had before being stranded with foreign, counterfeit money. She studied the numbers on the Muggle notes carefully before handing the worker the correct amount. In turn, she received coins with the Queen’s face on it. Her train would arrive in seventeen minutes.

“Trains for Falmouth leave from that platform,” the worker said.

There were several other people on the platform. With most of his worries now subsiding, Nott started chattering about his son. Everything was fine until he said, “I think he was eighteen months when he started using magic. I remember that! He Levitated his toys down the hall.” Naturally, a comment like that made a couple of Muggles peer over at him, and he stared right back. Astoria had to give them the “he’s unwell” look to get their eyes off of them. When the train arrived, everyone from the platform kept their distance from her and Nott. It was like they thought his oddness was going to harm them.

The train was louder and shakier than the Hogwarts Express, but Astoria was impressed with its travel time, which was only about twenty minutes. They alighted at Falmouth Town, which was merely a platform with signs that meant nothing to Nott, who could not remember his address. They looked at the map displayed behind cracked and yellowed plastic.

“Do you remember if you lived closer to the shore?”

“Erm...”

“Or round one of these schools? Any landmark at all. Docks, restaurants, parks…?”

“I remember… we had a patch of sedums in the front garden one year.”

Astoria sat down on the platform and made Nott conjure her some water. She was absolutely fed-up, and she left him to study the map by himself. If he could remember just one landmark, they would have a small lead.

“I remember a castle. Isn’t that funny?” he said, looking not at the map but off toward the light grey sky.

“Wait, a _castle_?”

“Yes. A castle, right on the coast. Theodore loved it so much.”

Astoria jumped up to the map to see if he was remembering a landmark nearby and not something he had seen on a family holiday. There really was a castle nearby, Pendennis Castle! She was fortunate that he had remembered something so conspicuous, not more of what flowers were planted outside his house fifteen years ago. Astoria memorised the names of roads she might or might not be able to use. She saw that they could have got off the train at the Falmouth Docks stop, but they were still only two miles away from the castle, and complaining was unproductive. Being so close, she had to start thinking of how she was going to explain everything to Theodore and convince him to let her sleep on his couch.


	9. Pendennis Point

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 9 - "Girl in the War" by Josh Ritter

Theodore lived in a house on Pendennis Point that only magic could have built and that only magic could find. The Nott residence was a stone-faced cottage soaked in saltwater spray and Muggle-Repelling Charms. Beyond the copse above the Nott residence was the castle, further away than was the crashing blue water below. Each of the cottage’s round windows had a flower planter beneath it, filled with either ornamental Flitterbloom or deadly Devil’s Snare. The broomshed at the side of the house was full of mouldy dictionaries, and the front door looked to have been routinely kicked. It was precisely a curious enough place to be Theodore’s.

“This is the place!” said Nott unnecessarily.

Astoria had already set off a buzzing Intruder Charm, but she knocked on the door anyway. When it cracked open, a familiar wand that was whittled with compulsive scratches and bite marks on the handle just missed her face. Astoria surrendered and let Theodore speak first.

“Holy––! What in Merlin’s name happened last night‽” Theodore exclaimed.

“Theodore! I’m back! Sorry it took so long! Theodore?” Nott said, elbowing Astoria to try to peer into the house.

“You stay back, both of you!” Theodore said, wagging his scratched wand. “I need to ask security questions!”

Astoria stomped her foot and whispered through the crack in the door.

“Theodore, no offense, but I don’t think You-Know-Who’s people would bother to disguise themselves for you, seeing as you know them personally. Plus, your father’s gone and Obliviated himself, so he might not be able to answer you. But go on; do what makes you happy, then.”

Theodore swung open the door, revealing how badly he needed a shower and a Cheering Charm. He decided to skip the questions but kept them on the doorstep nonetheless.

“Dad, what happened?” he asked, nearly crying with relief.

“I suppose it started with the ball I went to at the Springhouses’,” Nott Sr said before Astoria could explain. “There was a dreadful explosion in the manor –– four killed –– but I somehow made it out. I must’ve taken a blow to the head since I don’t remember very much, but if it hadn’t been for my ability to counter Dark magic, who knows what could’ve happened.”

At this, Nott displayed the searing Dark Mark to his son, who stared at him open-mouthed.

“Ah, looks like I’ve forgotten my manners as well. Theodore, this is Grace, my fairy godmother. She’s been helping me remember magic spells, and if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here right now. I was worried about you, and didn’t have any way of letting you know I was fine. I can’t remember how to Apparate, and the Dead Meaters have taken over transport.”

“Fairy godmother…? Dad, no…” Theodore uttered.

His eyes darted between them, and a tear stained his cheek.

“Yes, yes, I know,” Nott tried futilely to comfort his son. “It turns out I am the Marked One after all, and the Dead Meaters are after me. But everything will be all right now. Speaking of which, what magical appearance does Grace take in front of you? She looks rather short and silly to me, about your age.”

Theodore brushed his fringe out of his face, gulped sorely, and wrapped his arms firmly round his confused father. He had not lost him in the way he had thought, but this was another kind of pain. Astoria tried to feel happy that they were reunited, but the knot in her chest wanted only to tell Theodore that his dad could have killed hers. At last, Theodore ushered them into the house.

Astoria’s tired eyes were biased toward the couch, but there was much more to admire about the place. The living room had the old hearth-and-cauldron layout, coveted by many homeowners whose modern versions did not evoke the same charm. Two arches on either side of the hearth revealed small, curved hallways, each decorated with antique potions supplies. The Notts’ modern-use kitchen, necessarily, was added on to the back of the house, where the hardwood floor gave way into sanded stone from the rocky cliff and the window displayed the sea. Up above was an open bedroom loft, clearly Theodore’s, accessed by a straight ladder in the corner that came up between the floors. Nott was pacing round the house, telling his son a more detailed (and more ludicrous) version of the adventure.

“Are you off the Floo yet, Theodore?” Astoria cut in when she heard movement in the hearth.

“Er, I’ve been off the Floo,” Theodore answered, his shock limiting his conversation.

“We have bats in the chimney,” Nott Sr explained. “I do remember the bats.”

Nott Sr went into the kitchen to supplement his meagre breakfast with honey porridge, which he did not offer to Astoria. Maybe he thought she didn’t need the same amount of food humans did. She wondered how long her lie would hold up the less fairy-godmotherlike she behaved. Astoria felt guilty for bringing Nott straight to the door without giving Theodore a thorough explanation of his condition first. Being inside homey walls with someone she knew was everything in the world compared to her long night, and all she could do was stare at the ceiling. Calming himself, Theodore sent the _Muffliato_ spell to his father in the kitchen so they could talk openly. Astoria was boiling over with things she had to say, and by the time she told Theodore everything she could, she was shouting in distress. He asked uncomfortably few questions about the whole ordeal, rubbed his hands together, and looked at the floor. She realised she had not yet asked him what he had gone through. His side of the story only added to the misery.

Having been traded between Death Eaters’ wives since his father had been arrested, Theodore was finally able to return home upon turning seventeen. Shortly after, Voldemort decided it was time to free his remaining people in Azkaban, including Nott Sr and Lucius Malfoy, an event which was covered up in the media. As far as the war went, things had been looking up for Theodore until early July. It turned out that the entire population of Death Eaters, sans those already stripped of rank, had failed the most important mission of all: killing Harry Potter. This had occurred the night before the assault on Quennell Park, and indeed the failure had served as the impetus for Ivory Stretton’s plan to attack the Greengrasses. Theodore had no idea that his father was going to Quennell Park until after the fact. With that mission, Nott Sr was trying to save his own life after failing to take Harry Potter’s for a second time.

“I’m so sorry it’s come to this, Astoria. I didn’t even know why Dad was going out,” Theodore said with his face in his hands. “When I finally heard it was Quennell Park they were after, all I could think about was Dad killing you and your family… or your family killing Dad… and when I saw you both at the door, I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know how to thank you, really. I’m so, so, so _sorry_. I can’t thank you enough, Astoria.”

“I don’t know if you should thank me,” Astoria said plainly. “I needed him for magic, and I probably made him more confused than he would have been alone.”

“It doesn’t matter. He’s home, and he’s happy for once.” Theodore said.

Nott Sr was happy, but he was running his left arm under the tap. Theodore looked at him sadly.

“I didn’t know what to do about his arm burning. You-Know-Who doesn’t always know his location with that thing, right?” Astoria asked.

“No, thankfully. But, er, Dad can’t stay here too long. When the Dark Mark reacts, the Dark Lord knows he’s alive. And they’ll come looking for him here once they start caring to. I don’t know where to hide him or what to do. I need some time to think.”

“Well, I don’t mean to overstay my welcome, but my head’s been killing me, and I could really use a rest. Maybe you could think, and I could sleep?”

Theodore nodded. He lifted the _Muffliato_ spell from his father and started telling him about his good scores on his final exams. He must not have had the chance to talk about school when Nott had been a Death Eater instead of a dad. Nott no longer understood the Hogwarts system, but he congratulated Theodore anyway. Astoria fell asleep to their voices. She dreamt half a memory of the Slytherin common room, with lights twinkling across Draco’s and Rhiannon’s faces as they fought to write “Astoria is a big flirt” or “Astoria is already up past her bedtime.”

She awoke hours later to the glare of afternoon sun coming through the dirty windowpane. Theodore was right across from her with two books on his lap, quietly turning pages and comparing them. His closeness startled her, but he didn’t act like it was a weird place to sit, so it didn’t become one.

“Everything I know about the Dark Mark tells me it’s a bad sort of Protean Charm. That much I’ve already decided,” he said in response to her rustling.

Having napped in her sweaty clothes made Astoria feel twice as dirty, but she got to business regardless.

“Since you’re pressed for time, do you need to do anything about the Dark Mark? All the Dark Lord knows is that he’s alive, not where he is. You could hide your dad somewhere, and set him up with protective spells,” she suggested.

“Magic attracts, though,” Theodore said. “I have reason to believe that the Muggle-borns who have been killed whilst ‘in hiding’ gave themselves away with traces of magic here and there.”

“You’re not considering hiding him amongst Muggles, are you? The Death Eaters are attacking Muggles, too,” Astoria said.

“It’s the probability, though. If I put Dad somewhere magical, it’s nearly certain he’ll be found and killed. If I put him with Muggles –– a low-profile bunch, that is –– his chances of survival are much better,” reasoned Theodore.

Astoria wished that Theodore didn’t have to consider the probability of his father’s survival so point-blank. One day, she and Theodore might be considered part of an unlucky cohort, the “Boy-Who-Lived generation.”

“How on earth are you going to blend _him_ in with Muggles? They all looked at us like we were trolls at the slightest hint that we were different,” she noted.

Theodore sighed and said, “The only way I can think of would be a Memory Modifying Charm strong enough to overshadow his own magic. And don’t worry, I’m much better than Dad in the memory spells department. But anything he lost from his own spell would still be lost.”

After a little thought, he added, “Of course, there’s no reason why I couldn’t put a Memory Modifying Charm on him with _real_ events once it’s all over. It won’t be the same as his original memories, though.”

“Let’s not worry about that right now,” Astoria responded coolly. “What if they come to interrogate you about his location?”

“Oh, that ought to be interesting. Draco’s the one who’s been put on torture duty.”

Theodore had said plenty of inconsiderate things in the two years Astoria had known him, but this crowned them all. The last time Astoria had seen Draco had been a prolonged but otherwise unsuspicious goodnight in the common room the night the Headmaster was murdered. Her feelings about their relationship had been fly-swatted and scraped off the wall so many times that she could not find the right angle to approach the thought of him. What if Lucius Malfoy had come with Stretton, and what if Astoria had had to kill him like she did those two Death Eaters? Those killings still scratched at her ankles from below.

What if _Draco himself_ had been present? The person she had fallen in love with back when things made sense. This is the very first time Theodore had cared to mention him.

“They’re making Draco torture people for information?” she shrilled.

“Er, not really information? I can’t say for sure. I think You-Know-Who makes him Cruciatus anyone who doesn’t follow orders. I dunno. Draco did that thing he does where he mentions something that upsets him in passing and then won’t talk more about it.”

“Why are you being so casual about this?”

“I’m not. I just don’t have the answer to your question because he won’t tell me.”

“I can’t believe this, Theodore! We ran out to the grounds that night trying to make sure he was alive, and _this_ is how you talk about Draco? When did you speak with him?”

Theodore lost his patience.

“Oh, you know! Just a normal old chat at _five A.M._ when he Apparated straight into my house and started screaming his head off at me about my dad being at Quennell Park! I knew sweet fuck-all about it before! We nearly used our wands –– it’s always the same with him.”

“How did _Draco_ know about Stretton’s plan against my family?” Astoria asked in horror.

“Because the Lestranges live there with him! Those creeps know everything! Rabastan tattled on Stretton to the Dark Lord, but I guess he must have waited until the plan was already _well_ underway. He does stuff like that, you know. I had to live with those people for two and a half months.”

Astoria couldn’t muster a response. She walked down the hall to the shower, but the dirt was lodged behind her eyes. Nott was out there asking Theodore why he had been shouting at the fairy godmother. Theodore’s answer wouldn’t matter; he was going to have to play with the old man’s brain anyway before sending him to safety. Astoria thought of ways to convince Theodore to take her to Renshaw’s house after he put Nott in hiding. Renshaw and his family needed a proper burial, not a Muggle refrigerator.

When Astoria came out of the shower, she found Theodore in the bedroom. He was packing his father’s necessities into a suitcase much the same way Astoria had.

“If you’re really dropping him off with Muggles, you can’t have an Extension Charm on the luggage, Theodore,” she reminded him gently.

“Gah! But we only have two suitcases.”

He wasn’t thinking because he was so nervous. Astoria had only studied the theory of the Doubling Charm in N.E.W.T. Astronomy due to the constellation Gemini, but Theodore should have learnt how to _cast_ it in N.E.W.T. Charms. She told him to use it on the suitcase, and he did.

“What do you have in mind for your dad?” she asked.

“Since the Dark Lord has been calling him since early this morning, I don’t have much time to conjure a good false memory. There’s no telling when they’ll come looking here. I hate to do this, but I think I’m going to have to put him in a nursing home. If he seems like his memory is off, it would fill some of the loose ends in the Memory Modifying Charms. I guess it’s a necessary evil. Unless you have a better idea.”

Astoria was surprised that someone as smart as Theodore would consider anything she might have brainstormed. With all that Nott had done, Astoria had no personal investment in his fate, but she was concerned about Theodore. Not to mention she needed a few favours from him as well.

“I might have a way to, erm, get rid of the Dark Mark,” she announced.

“…What are you on about, Astoria? No, you bloody don’t.”

“Well, it’s not like I’ve tried it before, but I saw Professor Sinistra take the Dark Mark out of the sky at Hogwarts,” Astoria said. “She did it wandlessly. I remember the incantation and everything. I, er, don’t know if it works on skin.”

Theodore looked at her blankly and stopped packing the suitcase.

“But it’s Dark magic, Astoria.”

“I’m just telling you what I saw her do. I thought it might help. Even if we drop him off with Muggles, none of their tattoos _move_ , and he could accidentally touch it with magic in his hands. He’s kept it hidden all these years, but there’s no telling what will happen once we leave him on his own. You-Know-Who will know he’s alive as long as that thing’s on him.”

Theodore sat on the bed and wrung his hands.

“Well, incidentally, I know that the incantation to make the Protean Dark Mark is the same incantation to make the aerial Dark Mark. The aerial countercurse could be the same as the one on skin, but there’s no good way to test it,” he said.

“I’m not trying to push you to do something risky, but if we can get the Dark Mark off your dad, they’ll think he’s dead. The Death Eaters won’t be down your throat about what happened to him. Sending him to the Muggles without getting that thing off of him could make it hell for you.”

“See, I know you’re right, but this is such a powerful spell to work with blindly. I guess I could tell Dad to give me a Dark Mark so I can practise getting it off.”

“Why would you do _that_? What if it backfires and hurts you?” Astoria exclaimed.

“You’re missing the point. It could hurt me, but it won’t literally backfire. Plus, if Dad is able to cast it on me, I won’t have any link to You-Know-Who. If we cast things on _his_ mark carelessly, the Dark Lord might feel it and kill all of us. Like you said, it could be worth it to have them think Dad died.”

Before Astoria could think of a solid argument, Theodore was off to get his dad from the kitchen. She tailed him frantically, saying:-

“Well, at least put it somewhere easy to hide!”

“I was thinking under the arm. Nobody’s going to –– oh bludgers, I reek!” Theodore inhaled. “Let’s do the ankle, then.”

Theodore told Nott that he had a pain in his ankle, and since Nott would cast whatever people told him to, the _Morsmordre_ spell was singeing into Theodore within minutes. Unlike the Death Eaters’ Dark Mark, it ended up being a plain black circle when cast by someone who had no flashy design preference.

“What did I do‽ Theodore, I’m sorry! Oh no, what did I do‽ Grace, do something!”

“It’s all right, remember? It means he can counter Dark magic. He must have inherited the ability from you. Erm, that is, without as much strength. That’s why his mark is simple,” Astoria humoured Nott Sr.

It took some effort for Theodore to get out of Nott’s worried clutch, but he and Astoria went back to the room and locked the door.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“It’s not something I’d recommend, but I think the ones from You-Know-Who hurt far worse based on what I’ve seen. So, tell me what to do.”

“Okay. So, the incantation is ‘ _Morkredd_.’ And Professor Sinistra took her left hand… wait, no…” Astoria thought aloud.

“Are you about to tell me you don’t remember the bloody spell?”

“No, no! I just remembered she’s left-handed. She was using her wand hand, that’s all. I didn’t want to tell you the wrong thing.”

“I’m also left-handed, so it doesn’t matter. All this time and you didn’t know that about me?”

“Theodore, I don’t pay attention to everyone’s hands, okay? Listen, she held her left hand up towards the Dark Mark. Maybe in your case it would be down towards it? Okay… And she sort of pulled her arm back towards her and twisted her hand into a fist. It looked like this when she did it.”

“Okay.”

“So maybe you could do the same thing but point it at your ankle. I’m sorry I don’t know what the wand equivalent would be, so you’ll have to try really hard. She said the incantation the same time she made the movement.”

“Well, here we go… _Morkredd_. OH-MY-GOD-IT-BURNS!”

“Theodore, it’s working! Sort of! It’s getting really light!”

“THIS-IS-THE-WORST-OH-MY-GOD!”

“But it’s really working! This is wonderful!”

Theodore went into the foetal position on the bed, holding his ankle tightly and whinging in pain. When he finally let go, Astoria saw his handprints against his skin and a very faint scar in place of the mark.

“Well, what do you think?” she asked once Theodore settled.

“I think Dad’s going to cry, but yeah. Rips it right out. D-Does the job.”

“I’m sorry about the scar.”

“It’s only my ankle. Too bad it’s so small. It doesn’t make me look tougher.”

Theodore went in to check if his father had sensed anything coming from the ankle Dark Mark he had created. Nott Sr had felt no sensation whatsoever, so Theodore went right to business. He put his father to sleep, and then proceeded with the countercurse with clenched teeth. Nott tensed up pitifully, but it was over quickly enough. Unlike Theodore’s gradual fading, though, the snake and skull bled black out of Nott’s arm and onto the floor. Nott himself began to bleed immediately after, so Theodore hurriedly closed the wounds with the help of old D.A.D.A. lessons. He left his father asleep and looked at Astoria, who had been biting her nails.

“I guess now is as good a time as any.”

“The Memory Modifying Charm?”

“Mm. Otherwise he’ll ask me all about being ‘the Marked One’ when he wakes up to see the Dark Mark gone. He’ll see me draw my wand on him, too. I don’t want him to see me do that, even if he forgets it right after.”

“Well, good luck,” Astoria said.

Theodore pointed his wand right in the middle of the top of his father’s head. He shut his eyes, and with great concentration, said, “ _Confabulatio totalis_.” A long breath escaped him, and he roused his father from sleep. Nott’s eyes moved all over the room.

“Well, Theodore, it’s been quite a nice visit. I ought to be going… oh my, who’s this?”

“That’s my friend Grace, Dad.”

“Did… did… oh… did she use the shower? Are you being quite _careful_ , Theodore?”

“Dad, it’s not like that.”

“Oh?” Nott said, and got up from his seat. “Where is my luggage?”

“Right here, Dad. Are you ready to, er… teleport?”

“Always makes me motion sick. If we must,” Nott grumbled. “You know, Theodore, if you don’t clean yourself up, girls aren’t going to keep coming here. Maybe she picked the shower for a reason.”

“Dad! Stop! She’s not my girlfriend. Pay attention already.”

“Well, I don’t care what she is. No partner is going to put up with that long, dirty hair you sport and that body odour. She’s just too shy to say it, aren’t you, Grace?”

“Er…”

“ _Dad_.”

“All right, all right!”

They Disapparated, but not until after they were gone did Astoria consider what she would do if Death Eaters came to the doorstep demanding to know where the Notts were. It had been smart of Theodore not to tell her or let her tag along, since her Occlumency was mediocre. Then again, if the Death Eaters couldn’t get an answer out of her, they’d kill her. She hoped Theodore would be back soon so she didn’t have to use more Unforgivable Curses. The cold and calculating actions she had been forced to take on her journey were starting to set in. She thought about the two she had killed: Caleb Price, a Snatcher who was trying to kill Rhiannon, and Xavier Lofthouse, the Death Eater who had killed Uncle Faunus and viciously tried to use Adamina to kill the rest. Uncle Faunus’s death didn’t feel like it was avenged with Lofthouse’s death in the explosion. Even if Astoria had killed Lofthouse in a duel, she wouldn’t feel like an avenger for her family. Revenge was too romantic a concept. All she did was get rid of people who were bound to kill more people. But what did it mean for her in the long run? Should she be more disturbed by her actions than she was?

Theodore Apparated back into the house about twenty minutes later with two cans of Muggle drinks labelled “Virgin Cola.”

“I couldn’t pass it up,” Theodore sniggered.

“How is this _marketed_?” Astoria wondered. “How do you open it?”

“Ummm… I guess punch a hole in the top with your wand? No, wait, pull the oval tab forward.”

Theodore demonstrated, but the can hissed loudly at him and spilt a third of its bubbly contents.

“It’s too fizzy because I Apparated here. _Tergeo_ ,” Theodore cast, cleaning the floor.

“I want to make the worst joke right now about Virgin Cola,” Astoria said behind her hand.

“Ooh, you’re really bad!” Theodore laughed.

“It’s Daphne’s fault I am,” Astoria recalled fondly.

“Sure it is. Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

Their drinks were all sugar, but not half bad. Neither of them wanted to discuss how long she could safely stay there, and Astoria could not bring up the topic of Renshaw no matter how much she tried. Theodore at long last got ready for a shower.

“What do you want me to say if You-Know-Who shows up?” she asked sarcastically.

“Tell him I’m in the shower. Even he wouldn’t want to see me naked. What else are we supposed to say, right? That’s where I am,” he shrugged.

“Right.”

They joked about it to cope with everything, but moments after Theodore came out of the shower, an ominous crack sounded outside the door. Theodore did not hesitate to hit Astoria with a cold Disillusionment Charm to blend her in with the couch. She noticed that her body still made a depression in the cushion and stood up beside one of the chairs, not making a sound as knocks sounded against the door. Theodore drew both his and his father’s wands and peeked out the tiny window. Then he groaned and opened the door only a sliver, adjusting his bathrobe.

“What’s my least favourite brand of parchment and why?”

“Really, Theodore? Beedle’s Best because the texture’s weird against your hand when you write. Let me in. I need to talk to you.”

Astoria bumped three pictures on the wall, barely saving them from falling.

“Fine,” Theodore said, and Draco Malfoy tramped into the little house.

He looked worn, sleepless, and miserable. He sported a bright slash across his cheek.

“Well, he sent the Lestrange brothers to check out Quennell Park. Rabastan said it smells like blood magic, but Rodolphus said there’s nothing there! Nothing! Gone! Do you know anything else? Anything at all?” Draco interrogated.

“He sent _you_ looking for my dad, did he?” Theodore answered coldly.

“Theodore, I’m sorry. I just do what I’m told. He said… he said you might know of what happened to him…” Draco trailed off.

“Of course I don’t know, Draco!” Theodore screamed theatrically.

“Well, you’d better be prepared to present an ‘I don’t know’ in front of _him_ , all right?” Draco said with equal height of hand gesturing. “Do you have any other information since the last I saw you?”

“Oh, I get it. You’re using this errand as an excuse to find out more about the Greengrasses.”

“What’s so wrong about _that_ ‽ That Snatcher only knew so much, and the Dark Lord already killed him! The Snatcher said the Squib family died, and Faunus Greengrass died, and some girl ran off into the woods! You know, the _woods that aren_ ’ _t there any longer_?”

“Well, Draco, how’s your Occlumency holding up against You-Know-Who?” Theodore asked.

“It’s doing just damn fine!”

“What I mean is, can you use divertive Occlumency in addition to blocking? If the Dark Lord commands you to submit to Legilimency, can you really guide him through to the other side without him even noticing?”

“Yeah, I’d already be dead if I couldn’t! I’ve had plenty of opportunity with Rabastan’s constant assaults on everyone in the house,” Draco declared.

“Well then, I do have some news,” Theodore said.

Theodore lifted the charm from Astoria, and she stood there astonished, not a word on her tongue. Draco gasped at the sight of her, stepped forward, and stopped short. His quiet eyes spared her nothing but the emotion he felt. They both wrestled down the impact of seeing each other again. They were both alive and in the same room, and it was far more than they could have bargained for.

“Are you okay?” they asked at the same time.

They went silent at the same time, too. Their familiarity had been lost in barely two months. It was hard to meet Draco again when Astoria did not know herself anymore. There was no starting line to the marathon they had to speak.

“She hijacked a bus and kidnapped a bloke to get here, so don’t go and say something stupid to her,” Theodore cut in.

Astoria lost all her presentation and looked at the wall. Theodore was right; she was not the same person anymore. It wasn’t so much the bus driver and Dillon Washbourne. It was the violence still reverberating in her wand, the knowledge of Quennell’s curse in her blood, and the sea of disgusting minds she had swum through just to achieve temporary refuge.

“Ivory Stretton killed my cousin Renshaw,” Astoria said.

Then she remembered that Draco already knew all the deaths. There was no point in telling him. There was no point.

“I heard about that,” Draco said softly. “I don’t know what to say. That’s horrible.”

He had so much shame on his face. She couldn’t take it. She had done so much in so short a time. If she only knew how to Apparate as far as her father, she would grab Draco and Theodore and simply _go_. She would come back for Hestia and Flora, and Montel and Tracey, and Professor Sinistra. Voldemort wouldn’t have anybody left once the old stuffy Death Eaters died out. It was an angry fantasy.

“Draco, look, I already know it isn’t your fault,” she said, hitting her arms at her side. “You don’t have to look at me like that. In fact, please don’t.”

“I don’t… there’s too much going on, and now your family…”

Theodore stepped away from them, into the kitchen, where he started clanging cookware. And that was when Draco cracked like glass in front of her, sinking onto the couch and sobbing. Astoria had not seen him like this before. He always kept everything in, holding a shield even when he was at his worst. Or at least, whatever his “worst” meant before he became a Death Eater. Draco’s Occlumency did not fail; rather, he poured it willingly into her hands before she even knew what to do about it. Her headache was heavy around his confusion, so she sat next to him and touched his arm.

“Draco, if you want to talk, then…”

“I can’t –– I can’t talk. Just take what you want to know,” he insisted.

“It’s not that detailed unless I cast _Legilimens_ , and I don’t want to do that to you,” she answered. “I just get stupid bits and pieces on the surface.”

“There’s enough magic in his house to hide you from the Ministry. Please, Astoria… there’s too much to say.”

“I wasn’t talking about the Trace, Draco. I meant that you’re giving me a lot to sift through here, and I don’t want to upset you with the spell. It feels really intense, and––”

“Stop. I love you. You deserve to know what’s going on,” Draco said.

She latched onto his words without knowing what to do with them, and it stung when she realised they were true. Carefully, Draco reached across her and slid a cold hand into her robes. He found and placed her own wand in her hand and clasped her fingers around it. And he sat quite still, trying to get a hold of himself without the feint of Occlumency.

“The formal spell is very unpleasant when it isn’t used mutually, Draco. It’s like coming up from the dungeons in the morning,” Astoria warned. “Everything is dim for so long, and then the sun hits you straight in the eyes.”

“It-it’s fine. I know I was selfish. I kept too much from you. And… and I won’t feel right until you know everything,” he stammered.

Astoria hushed him. She realised he did need it this way. He didn’t have to try to put it in words.

“ _Legilimens_.”

In spite of her warnings, it was very different with him. Where others lost their concentration, flailed about in panic, and grimaced their way through Legilimency, Draco heaved a huge sigh of relief. His shoulders fell, his body relaxed, and he dropped his forehead right onto hers. Everything in his touch and his mind was strange and unprecedented. It went through her chest and to her spine with a pleasant eeriness. With her free hand, she supported Draco’s tired face. Nothing else was quite like this.

Astoria was still dealing with the effects of her concussion, and thus even without his Occlumency, Draco was still difficult to navigate. Even though she doubled her efforts, his memories came to her softly in her own muddled mind. The things Draco wanted her to know were centre stage, playing out the past year as a tragedy. It took the least amount of effort to see his father’s imprisonment, his aunt living at his house, his mission to kill Dumbledore, and his failure to do so. Draco’s mother was there, convincing Snape to make the Unbreakable Vow for his sake, but what could Draco do to help her? Voldemort himself _lived in their home_ , like a mould that kept returning.

The lights of Draco’s thoughts shone brightly in the front, but there were still hidden players in the rafters. Professor Charity Burbage fell hard onto the stage, her bones crunching in the pressure of a large snake’s throat. Rabastan Lestrange patrolled the audience overnight, pillaging the dreams of those who could not Occlude whilst sleeping. Prisoners cried beneath the stair trap, or at the wrong end of the Cruciatus Curses Draco had been forced to cast. The stage curtains were always being drawn too early for Draco to take it all in, but he and Astoria finally watched it together unabridged.

By a miracle, Ivory Stretton had not approached Draco’s father since he had been stripped wandless by the Dark Lord. But would Lucius have gone to Quennell Park if asked? Draco shook as Astoria found this question in his mind and grabbed the hem of her robes. _The attack on your family was a choice, not an order_ … _Would Father have gone? Would he have gone by choice?_

Astoria’s eyes burned to take in the spotlight. She had wondered the same thing about Lucius. She ran her thumb over the cut on Draco’s face. It screamed of Voldemort, and Draco’s mind screamed for more of her touch. It was uncomfortable to learn that each of the moments they had shared before had been under such a weight. He had come to love her even though he had only started talking to the Greengrasses because his parents told him to. His parents were hideous to him for what they had done as Voldemort’s servants, but he loved them. He loved them and hated them and loved them…

Draco wondered about Astoria’s love for him into her eyes, and the production derailed. Hecklers threw in ugly thoughts neither of them wanted to hear. He clawed all over his mind trying to figure out why the shower was still steamy and _both_ Astoria and Theodore had wet hair. He wanted to know why she hadn’t responded when he told her he loved her. Were they over? Was it the circumstance, or her ultimate lack of feeling for him? Didn’t the same circumstances apply to Theodore? What had she seen in Theodore, Draco wondered. Draco didn’t blame her; he felt dirtier as a Death Eater than any of the people he had once considered Mud. But his thoughts continued pelting him, and he pondered if Astoria would be safer as a supporter of the Dark Lord.

Her Legilimency was the polar opposite of Rabastan’s –– not because it was fundamentally less invasive, but because Draco wanted to belong to her, to be a part of her. He could stay like this forever, pouring out the troubles she didn’t need to bear. Astoria was left wishing that she could share her experiences the same way. If Draco were also a Legilimens, it would put them higher than this war.

“I hate to interrupt the, er… whatever thing you’re doing there, but I need to know how much spaghetti I should make,” Theodore said, knocking Astoria and Draco out of the moment.

Draco was still recovering; his wet face had fallen on her shoulder, and his hands moved to grip her waist. It was nice to be close, to really be _held_ after all that happened. Astoria had always been the sentimental sort, and being in Draco’s presence brought on some dreamy thoughts. But it was also halting and confusing. It unsettled her how many different ideas Draco had about maintaining their relationship now that she could not leave the country. She cared about him so deeply, but being in his mind made her realise they were not on the same page. She couldn’t become a supporter of Voldemort.

“Er, we’d both like spaghetti, thank you,” she replied to Theodore with a shrug.

“Noble use of Legilimency there,” said Theodore. “Draco, you could’ve told me you wanted spaghetti without her using that trick.”

Draco didn’t say anything and ruefully moved away from her. They all went into the kitchen to set up a quick meal. Outside, a flock of seagulls arrived, cawing loudly. Astoria watched them soar along the coast and land on the white, rocky sand below, preening and searching the ground. Their noise was disharmonious but evoked breezy, lazy days on the beach.

“Those things attack,” Theodore stated. “They probably heard me talk about food.”

The quickness of Theodore’s food preparation didn’t indicate the quality; he added enough herbs to make it delicious. It was her first hot meal since the house elves had left Quennell Park. She needed to learn some cooking spells if she was going to make it through the war on something other than granola.

“This is very good, Theodore. Thank you for making it,” she said.

“Not a problem. I’ve been meaning to tell you, if you know a house or building is held up by overage magic, it’s safe to say you can use magic in it. But I wouldn’t risk it outdoors, even if you are with an adult who’s actively casting.”

“I grew up with that rule,” Astoria said, nodding.

“The Ministry’s going to get you whether it’s run by politicians or Death Eaters. Just making sure you knew,” Theodore said. “By the way, the takeover’s pretty soon, isn’t it, Draco?”

“M-hm.”

“So where do you think you’ll go next, Astoria? Do you have _any_ more relatives here? I can Apparate you to them,” Theodore offered.

Astoria twirled her spaghetti grimly.

“I have relatives in France.”

“Er… oh. I can’t Apparate internationally.”

“Right. And I can’t write to them if the rumours about the post being monitored are true,” Astoria said.

“They are true,” said Draco. “And even though there’s no all-hours border guard yet, the ports most popular with wizards are being watched by Death Eaters.”

“Great,” said Astoria.

She paused, and looked back at Theodore.

“I don’t want to ask this over a meal, but it seems I have to. Could you take me to my cousin’s house if I tell you exactly where it is? I don’t want the Muggles to get their bodies. They’ll never be claimed. If you’ve never been round the area, I understand…”

“Well, you’ll have to tell me _exactly_ where to go,” Theodore said. “But I don’t know if You-Know-Who will send people other than Draco here. Draco, what do you think? Can I spare ten minutes to help her with her family?”

Draco clinked his fork on the plate.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea. He might be sending people there –– I just don’t know. It’s a bad idea.”

“That’s not how the Dark Lord operates,” Theodore argued. “Not with Muggles anyway. He leaves them there as a joke for the police. Well Astoria… if we do this really quickly, will it bother you?”

“No. I completely understand it has to be quick. Thank you,” Astoria said.

Theodore seemed to be under the impression that he owed her this for her protection of his father. She didn’t want to look at it that way. She would have engaged in combat with Nott Sr if it had come to it.

“Why did you ask me what _I_ thought if you were going to go anyway?” Draco grumbled at Theodore. “Astoria, I’m sorry to put it this way, but it’s not like you can do anything for them. You could get killed right along with them.”

Draco was right, but when the only things she could think about were the Muggle police or paramedics coming to drag the bodies away, she couldn’t heed him. It was too complicated to explain, and she didn’t have the ease of having her mind picked over like he just had.

“I killed Xavier Lofthouse, Draco. I can manage burying my cousin.”

“You––” he gulped and touched her shoulder.

“Yes, well, I had to.”

“Are you _okay_ , though? What spell did you use? It didn’t hurt you, did it?”

“I’m fine. I’m not trying to brag about what happened, but I know exactly how worried you are about me. You’ve always thought I’m some sort of, I don’t know, little glass doll. I’m not. I’ve seen it all. And I’ve seen the same things you have, too, through Legilimency. So we’re even,” Astoria said.

“‘Even?’ Why are you accusing me of worrying about how _even_ we are? I’m just trying to make sure you don’t get killed! I can only do so much, so, you know, if I have to lose you, I don’t want it to be a loss of your life!” Draco exclaimed.

“What about _you_ , then? You think it’s nice for me to know that You-Know-Who is at your breakfast table? You think I’ve slept soundly since you left Hogwarts? I can rip that Dark Mark right off you, Draco, and then you won’t be the Dark Lord’s anymore! You’ll be mine! But you’re so worried that I’ve gone and sexed up Theodore in the shower to understand what you mean to me!”

“I didn’t––”

“We actually had Virgin Cola,” Theodore added unconstructively.

Draco could have recited the entirety of the Hogwarts anthem he had never sung sooner than he might have guessed that Virgin Cola was a fizzy drink. Astoria quickly pointed out the empty cans in the bin and whisked Draco back to the living room.

“Neither of you two nobs are my type, you know!” Theodore called after them.

Draco sat back on the couch and rubbed his forehead.

“I’m really a mess, aren’t I? I didn’t even bother to talk to you. Legilimency doesn’t count as real talking, does it? I was just so relieved that you were alive. I wanted you to know everything at once so you wouldn’t hate me as much.”

Astoria couldn’t fight a bittersweet smile over his need for reassurance.

“Come now, Draco. I don’t hate you. I was worried sick.”

“Well, I never asked you what happened on your end. Maybe we could talk about it? I’ve never used Legilimency… Erm. If it’s too hard to talk about, I understand.”

“I’d rather talk anyway since I took a hit to the head earlier. By the way, since I know you’re into this stuff, Legilimency gets dreadfully difficult to control. You glean all sorts of things you don’t want to. I wouldn’t recommend learning it. You have enough stress as it is.”

Draco clicked his tongue, “So, erm… it seems like your family Disapparated to safety and… left you accidentally?”

“There were a few bad Splinches, but all signs point to them managing to get out. They thought I died in the explosion,” Astoria said. “Quennell told me they got away.”

“Explosion?”

“Lofthouse tried to detonate a bomb inside of Adamina’s body. I had to use a bad hex, but I got it out of her, and Lofthouse’s spell returned to him,” Astoria said.

It was so much better to tell Draco. When she had told Theodore, he crossed his arms and wore the most gobsmacked look. Draco merely gave her his attention and support, making even the hardest topics spill easily.

“Daphne’s the one I’m most worried about. She lost an arm, and I think she might have divined the Death Eaters’ attack. The burden of that has to be devastating her,” Astoria said.

“Divined it? Daphne?”

“I was surprised, too, but that’s how she alerted Father.”

“If she Saw the attack, perhaps she’ll also See that you survived.”

“That would be nice, but I honestly don’t want my family to risk coming back here. If they still think I’m dead, they’ll stay put.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Rhiannon’s lived with us the past year. She escaped along with my parents,” Astoria stated.

“I was wondering. That’s good,” Draco said.

Everything that had embittered Astoria over the years now compelled her to stare at Draco the way she did. The relief he had at learning of Rhiannon’s safety was as true as his love for Astoria. It swirled in and overtook her. It was neither Astoria’s kindness nor Voldemort’s evil that had changed Draco; he had learned that even when he lost control of everything else, he could develop his own values independently. He was willing to separate from his parents’ influence. The very few choices Draco had within his own grasp were that much more precious to him. He made them with what he felt in his heart. He made them to keep his parents safe, even knowing that _their_ choices had demolished his own safety. There was no greater man in Astoria’s eyes than one who had grown in character of his own accord.

“Don’t feel like you have to tell me, Astoria. It’s really fresh. I can’t imagine how difficult it was for you to even make it here,” Draco spoke up when she fell silent.

“No, I was just thinking…”

 _Of how much I love you_ , her heart pronounced.

“...of how much I missed you,” her lips failed.

He stared at her.

She went on, “Even little things. Like how you drum your fingers when you’re nervous. And the way you sit on couches. And how your right sleeves are always more stretched out than your left because you put your wand there in a pinch…”

“I didn’t know I’d stretched that many shirts,” Draco tutted, examining his sleeve.

Astoria leaned against him and told him everything that was safe for him to hear. She told him the things she had not bothered to tell Theodore and hoped he knew how much that set him apart. As Draco stroked her hair, she relayed her shock that her mother was not only a Legilimens all along, but had not interfered with her growing art. She said that she still had a piece of Foe-Glass from Rhiannon, and worried that constantly checking it would consume her as it had Rhiannon. She told him that she had passed the Transfiguration and Arithmancy O.W.L.s, because for whatever reason that seemed relevant in the comfort of Draco’s arms.

“Did you fail Herbology?” he grinned when she avoided the topic.

“I was never good at Herbology,” she laughed, thinking of Quennell’s arboreal Horcrux with a dark, coping sense of humour.

“I would like to know where you’re going next,” Draco said after a glance at the clock.

“I’m not sure. Perhaps I could find a family friend or someone from––”

“Don’t go to the Tonkses,” Draco interrupted. “The Dark Lord sicced Bellatrix on them not long ago. She’s after my other aunt, Lupin, and all. They’re with the Order of the Phoenix, not to mention they have connections to the House of Black.”

In response to Astoria’s look, Draco added, “I knew you’d consider them a safe place to go. I wanted to warn you ahead of time that it’s one of the worst choices you could make. You’d do better to live in Snape’s pantry than with the Tonkses.”

“Point taken, Draco,” Astoria murmured, clearly remembering the ominous conversation her mother had had with Mrs Tonks two Christmases ago. The problem was that Mrs Tonks would have understood and welcomed Astoria with open arms.

“I have to go soon. You know all the things I _don_ ’ _t_ want you to do already,” Draco said, watching the lowering sun rather than the clock.

Astoria nodded without much commitment to behaving herself, and Draco called in Theodore. After nagging him further about where not to take Astoria, Draco returned to the subject of Nott Sr.

“If I hear anything about your father, I’ll let you know as soon as I can,” Draco said.

“Funny. I thought I was to tell _you_ any news I heard,” Theodore snapped.

Astoria clenched her fists; Theodore had done a poor job convincing Draco that he thought his father was really missing or dead. But she and Theodore both realised Draco’s intentions at the same time.

“If _I_ hear anything about your father, that means I’m not the only one who did, Theodore. Do you understand? So that’s why I’ll tell you if something… uncovers,” Draco emphasised.

Theodore bit his cheek and caught Draco in one of those manly, one-armed, patting sort of hugs. If Astoria were in a better situation, she might have tried to mimic it when Draco kissed her goodbye. It certainly would have made him laugh.

“Ready?” Theodore said the moment Draco wasn’t there to nag any longer. “Describe your cousin’s place to me, and we’ll get going.”


	10. An Improper Use of Magic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 10 - "Ode to My Family" by The Cranberries

On the edge of the Bromyard Downs sat a big white farmhouse without a single enchantment left on it. It stood in the cooling sky with a shattered window and the dead dreams of a family yet to grow. The Dark Mark floated faintly over the roof, sure to stand out at night to those who could see it. Theodore took it down with Professor Sinistra’s spell without being asked to.

Astoria hoped that she and Theodore’s haste would not diminish the sanctity of a scene of so much loss. Gracie’s grandfather, Bob lay maimed and purple next to a television still playing loud. Renshaw was broken all wrong at the foot of the stairs, Gracie not far from him. It was not the same as when Stretton had been there like Astoria had seen through her mind. It was seventeen hours worse.

Astoria wondered about the lives of people who had to clean up scenes like this daily, because she crumbled, unable to look away from their ugly clay skin and grotesque positions. Theodore certainly wasn’t fond of it, but he had at least never met these people alive.

“Would it be all right to Transfigure them?” he asked.

“ _Please_ ,” Astoria cried.

His choice to Transfigure them into soft, red poppies was at once beautiful and cutting. They were disturbingly larger than the normal plant and quickly became difficult to differentiate from one another. Astoria prayed silently before her fingers touched the flowers; she held Renshaw and Gracie in one hand and Mr Bob Page in the other. The television sang something about chewing gum until Theodore turned it off with a blast from his wand. He flung the Death Eaters that Gracie had shot into the brambles behind the property to rot alone. Theodore Apparated Astoria to Penhurst, the resting place of all Greengrasses.

The sun cast its last rays into the remaining shards of broken stained glass at Astoria’s church. She and Theodore stepped on the lonely grass toward the sleep of a great uncle neither she nor Renshaw had ever known. The tombstone of Squib’s rights activist, Calhoun Greengrass, read November 1968. It had been some time, but he would welcome Renshaw home. Theodore opened three small beds down from the plot, where Astoria buried the flowers in silence. Theodore conjured a stone. Astoria asked him not to put their names on it lest the Lestranges return to the site and discover that they had been there.

“What do you want me to engrave?”

Astoria followed the pace of Theodore’s spell, saying, “‘They cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents; but Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods.’”

Theodore did a lovely job with the engraving. He was Wizarding Pagan and had his own customs, so Astoria invited him to make tribute, too, since he had helped so much. Into the stone he etched runes of a divine protectress. Astoria had no idea what they meant but knew they were respectful.

“My family always cremates,” he then said bluntly over the site. “I guess not everyone does since the Muggles burned witches. I thought some Wizarding Christians started cremating because of the threat of necromancers, so it’s a little surprising for me to see a graveyard of this size.”

Astoria was beyond flabbergasted at his choice of a topic.

“My family buries out of humility to the Earth.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Theodore seemed confused at her strong reaction. Astoria didn’t hold it against him. How could she? He had been more than willing to bring her here; he was just socially incompetent. But he was perfectly Theodore-ish, her true friend and consolation. It was a rather pitiful funeral, but they had to Apparate back to his house as soon as possible. Theodore had placed so many barriers and shields on the place that they arrived outside in spite of them being the only two at the house. As he was unweaving the spells, Astoria could not help but step to the side of the house to see the ocean. Putting its gentle sounds with a beautiful view briefly distracted her from the impact of her sorrow.

“Is it nautical twilight yet?” Theodore asked to further divert her.

He ensured access to the house and arrived at her side.

“Look to the horizon. What do you see?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Then, yes, it’s approximately nautical dusk. Speaking of twilight, did you enjoy the light skies at the solstice?”

“I have no especial feeling about it, but I take it you don’t like it when you can’t see as many stars up there.”

“I’m pretty predictable in that respect.”

What was not predictable was a rogue pair of seagulls who had decided they would prefer terrorising the civilians of Falmouth than gracefully dipping the waters for fish before an appropriate diurnal lull. Coming from the edge of the cliff in what looked more to be hostile levitation than flight, the gulls dove for Astoria. A wing touched her ear in more aggressive ways than an insect avoiding a swat.

“Oh no!” she cried, flailing her wand out, and it fired a dazzling gold light into the air which frightened the birds enough to send them seaward.

Theodore, who had also been within range of the birds, panicked more upon seeing her wand discharge than the seagull attack itself. He started casting rather loud magic and cast a shield down over the property like a waterfall.

“…What is it? What’s wrong?” Astoria gasped.

“Well, we weren’t in the house, and there was no magic at the moment to cover you!” he exclaimed. “The Ministry might have Traced you!”

“But… but… I didn’t really cast any spell in particular. It was impulse! It –– It was an accident! The seagulls!”

“Well, _I_ know that, don’t I?” Theodore barked. “Come in the house. We can hope it’s trivial with everything else going on.”

“I –– I don’t know what to do. Should I cast something else once I’m in the house?”

“No! No! No more magic! You’ve done enough as it is.” Theodore insisted.

He lit the lamps in the living room and secured the house for night-time.

“I’m sorry, Theodore.”

“Don’t be sorry for my sake,” he said. “Ah, bollocks, there’s the owl.”

“The owl? From the Ministry? They really picked up on that little spell?”

“It’s a wonder they didn’t send the letter on a seagull,” Theodore answered, watching the owl struggle with the barriers. “No, no… wait a moment, little guy.”

Theodore let the owl through. It ruffled its feathers indignantly for having encountered so much resistance and dropped a semi-gloss envelope on Astoria’s lap. Without waiting for any written reply, the owl departed. Theodore was now substantially more amused than he ought to have been and hovered over Astoria as she opened the letter.

> Dear Miss Greengrass,
> 
> We have received intelligence that you performed an unidentified spell at thirty-one minutes past nine this evening. As you know, underage witches are not permitted to perform spells outside of school, and further Spellwork on your part may lead to expulsion from said school (Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, 1875, Paragraph C).
> 
> Under normal circumstances, the Improper Use of Magic Office would consider this your first official warning. Regrettably, because we are unable to determine the nature and results of the spell you used, your presence is required at a disciplinary hearing at the Ministry of Magic at 8 A.M. on the fourth of August per the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, 1875, Paragraph H. Please do not hesitate to send me an owl if you have any questions or concerns.
> 
> Hoping you and your family are well,
> 
> Yours sincerely,
> 
> **_Mafalda Hopkirk_ **
> 
> Improper Use of Magic Office
> 
> Ministry of Magic

“Hm. Hopkirk never invited _me_ to contact the office. Must be because you’re a Greengrass,” Theodore commented.

Astoria was so struck by the irony of the Ministry wishing her family well that she couldn’t even glare at Theodore. The Improper Use of Magic Office had not detected a thing about Quennell Park, but a wand misfire at a seagull had given Astoria a brush with the law. Theodore was tired of hovering and grabbed the letter from her limp hands.

“‘Unidentified spell!’ That’s what you’re in for? What spell did you even use?”

“How am I to know‽ I grabbed my wand on instinct when the seagulls touched me. All I said was ‘ _oh_ ’ or ‘ _oh no_ ’ or something, and my wand fired!” Astoria recounted.

“What kind of spell is ‘ _oh no_ ,’ Astoria? How are they going to get you on ‘ _oh no_ ’ charges‽”

“YOU TELL ME!”

With her nerves once more on edge, Astoria was thankful for the unspoken permission to stay the night. She had no idea whom she would bother with her presence in the morning. With Ministry attention, the news could break out of the attack on her family and make her an even bigger target for Death Eaters. That was the only reality –– she had absolutely no faith in the government’s ability to help her. Theodore’s monologue did not help, either.

“You’re in a real bind because the Ministry is probably going to use _Priori Incantato_ on your wand to identify spells you cast,” he said. “My understanding is that you used the Killing Curse last night, and that could show up, too. But maybe you won’t get Azkaban! If you do, the security there is deplorable. I bet Draco would vouch for you to the Dark Lord. You’ll have to play the part, though, if you want that to work.”

“ _Do you hear yourself, Theodore_ ‽ Even if I _did_ stoop so low as to ‘play the part,’ it wouldn’t be believable! Need I remind you that Death Eaters attacked and killed my family? I couldn’t pretend to be on your side to save my life!” Astoria shouted.

“Okay, first of all, it’s not _my_ side, Astoria. And second of all, I bet that _yes_ , to save your life, you could fake it till you make it! Your options are dwindling. In fact, the Ministry will be completely taken over by the Dark Lord by the time of your court date! You’re going to have to make up a story and stick the hell to it if you want to live!”

“We’re talking life and death over a pair of seagulls!”

“Can’t be helped.”

Although eternally grateful for all of his help, Astoria didn’t think she could take another minute with Theodore and got ready for bed with what was in her suitcase. Both Astoria and Theodore were viciously prone to overreacting, and realising this, Astoria decided not to talk about her court date anymore. She would leave first thing in the morning. She checked Rhiannon’s Foe-Shard, which was hers now, and there wasn’t a seagull or Death Eater in sight. She would have Theodore Apparate her to Hogsmeade in the morning and beg Professor Sinistra for both shelter and legal advice. Regardless of whether the Ministry was run by politicians or Death Eaters, someone like Professor Sinistra could surely navigate it.

Theodore offered to wash Astoria’s pyjamas, which were covered in blood, grass stains, and sweat. He then put her up in his loft so that she wouldn’t have to sleep in the room of someone who had attacked her family. It was sort of nice up there. Then she put her head on Theodore’s pillow and got a long black hair in her nose.

“You shed like a cat, Theodore,” she called sleepily.

“Don’t wanna hear it. You do, too.”

“Goodnight.”

“Night, Astoria.”

But it was morning so quickly. Astoria and Theodore ate sweets for breakfast and got dressed. Professor Sinistra was going to be so upset to see them under these circumstances that Astoria almost couldn’t bring it upon her. But Astoria was a danger to so many other people, and Professor Sinistra was the only one who could protect her now. She clicked the lock on her suitcase. Theodore laced his shoes. Then there were two loud knocks at the door.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Theodore said.

“What?” Astoria whispered.

“Out. Go out the kitchen window. Out the back,” Theodore said.

 _What now_?

He cast another Disillusionment Charm on her and her suitcase and gently commanded the window open. It was hardly large enough, but Astoria managed with a chair and determination. Theodore was at her side, but she was unable to see him.

“Don’t say a word. Don’t come looking for me. Go down to the cliff and stay hidden. If I don’t come back in one hour, place your wand straight up at the nearest street, and take the Knight Bus to Hogsmeade. Do not talk to anyone on the Knight Bus. Do not give your name.”

That was all she heard from Theodore. Once her feet hit the ground, the window shut, and Astoria scrambled for the edge of the cliff, where it dropped off suddenly into a pool of blue-green water. Although there were plenty of lower slopes along the coast, they were not in line with his house, and she did not want whoever was in front of the house to see her footsteps depress on the grass. When the dull sound of Theodore’s front door slamming reached her, she took one last look at the depths below her and jumped.

She had taken too great a chance that the water had not been rocky, but dying on the rocks below might have been preferable to facing the threat at the door. Having encountered no rocks, Astoria still remained a threat to herself. She was a fully clothed doggie-paddler trying to hold on to a suitcase and a wand. The water itself was not cold, but the Disillusionment Charm on her was, and she grew dreadfully shivery in the water’s foam.

 _Who_ ’ _s in his house_?

Kicking frantically to stay above the water, she put her wand in her mouth and inched toward a leveller part of the rocky coastline across the pool.

 _Is it Voldemort_?

She shoved her suitcase ashore and suffered her way up, her wet clothes pulling her with unanticipated force. It was so, so cold to come up into the breeze, however gentle it was.

 _Is Theodore going to die_?

Astoria curled up and put her nose in her knees, helpless once again. One hour is the time Theodore had given her to wait. It would be excruciating. That was more than enough time for him to get killed. She cursed Nott Sr for forcing Theodore into this culture, and she held her wand at the ready. She used the sun and shadows to estimate the time, but she didn’t care what time it _was_ , only the time that had passed. Counting minutes was the only thing demanding enough to tame her thoughts.

 _Nineteen minutes and one, nineteen minutes and two_ …

A wave of warmth came over Astoria, and she saw her wet arms rather than the scratchy sand beneath her. Had Theodore been the one to lift the Disillusionment Charm? Had everything blown over?

“Well, if it isn’t our little songbird.”

Alecto Carrow, the source of Flora’s insomnia, jumped down to Astoria soundlessly from the cliffs above. She was walking towards her, not on ground, but on top of the water, whilst currents broke against her feet. In her hand, Alecto showed the letter from the Ministry, which had been mistakenly left behind on Theodore’s couch.


	11. Alecto

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Take the brown eyes of my father,  
>  those gun shots, those mean muds.  
> Bury them.  
> Take the blue eyes of my mother,  
> naked as the sea,  
> waiting to pull you down  
> where there is no air, no God.  
> Bury them."_  
> \- "The Fury of Hating Eyes," A. Sexton
> 
> ≡
> 
>  **enmeshment (n., attr. Salvador Minuchin)** \- the lack of personal boundaries in families, in which members cannot autonomously develop and become undifferentiated from one another; the members take on roles different from their actual position in the family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 11 - "Virtual Mima" by Masahiro Ikumi
> 
>  **Content warnings:** suicide attempt & suicide (mentioned), trauma bonding, child abuse, sexual harassment of a minor

There was no sign of Theodore. Astoria stood up in the wind, unsure of what to do with her wand, but determined not to have it taken from her by the new arrivals. Alecto wore a floral dress with a scooped neck and quarter sleeves, which did not flatter her shape but rather the marks on her body. Encircling the base of her neck, a place very painful for a tattooing spell, was a snake with a head on both ends. Its fanged mouths parted over each of the rounds of her collarbone, and its scaled body squirmed. Like the ink on her neck, her Dark Mark moved expressively in the coastal air. Her sandals soaked with ocean water.

Astoria had seen Alecto thrice before. The first time, she had passed by the heavily-bundled Carrow family in Knockturn Alley round Christmastime. The second time was at the funeral of Abraxas Malfoy, when Astoria had been wearing Hestia’s appearance, and Alecto had been wearing a black veil. The third time, Alecto had harassed the girls backstage at a Pariah concert. This encounter on the water, though, was the first time Astoria had seen Alecto unobscured and in good lighting. Her auburn hair was losing lustre, and she relied on a charm to keep the colour. She was in her mid-forties, a bit older than Astoria had realised, yet she came across as jarringly immature.

Alecto’s twin brother, Amycus, poked his thick skull over the edge of the cliff. Astoria dared a quick glance at him to try to evaluate her two threats with only one set of eyes. Amycus was evidently unable to buoy his body with the acrobatic magic that Alecto must have used to descend the cliff. His eyes on Alecto meant that no wand had hitherto fixed on Astoria. Alecto did not have her wand drawn, either. Astoria doubted that the Death Eater could perform half the Killing Curse her mother could without a wand, but there was still no reason to feel safe. It was impossible to speak first, since Alecto had not yet provided a situation to read. In her summer dress, Alecto was doing nothing in particular, yet she was repellent still. Astoria’s concussion was still throbbing, and looking at her enemy with injured Legilimency gave her an uncomfortable feeling of _presque vu_. Alecto’s sunlit eyes were a novelty of culpability, and Astoria hated them without knowing how.

“The Ministry can’t figure the spell you used, Astoria. Know how rare that is?” Alecto chatted with a voice designed to counteract the mess in her mind, flapping the letter in the breeze. “Mind telling us what happened?”

“You’ll laugh, and you won’t believe me,” Astoria said forthrightly.

“I think we could use a good laugh.”

Alecto walked across the water with quiet splashes, coming closer to the shore. Astoria dug her heels in the sand. She was dishevelled and carried a wet suitcase. There was nothing to hide even if she could. She had no idea what Theodore had told these people and did not want to contradict him.

“My wand fired when a seagull startled me. The Ministry caught it.”

Alecto’s madder-red lips spread with a smile. She had had a tooth replaced; it was whiter than the others. Standing neither close nor far, Alecto turned the letter over and over in her hands, thinking.

“Don’t want to go to court, eh?”

“No. That’s why I came here in the first place,” Astoria answered.

Alecto tore the letter into bits and threw it into the water with flair. Astoria was not exactly surprised. Alecto considered the favour a way to create debt. A false sense of security.

“We’re taking over the Ministry today,” Alecto said cheerfully, as though she were talking about baking a cake. “You’re a witch, ain’t you?”

“I am.”

“Then riddle me this, Astoria. Why be forbidden from magic? You’re in your formative years. It’s not wrong to do what’s natural for you.”

Astoria shivered from the wind but tried her best to play off of Alecto’s ease.

“It’s certainly more convenient,” she coughed.

“Well, just between us, I’d wait until the _shift change_ ,” Alecto leered. “But then do as you like. We won’t stop you from your birthright. Will we, Am?”

“Nah,” Amycus called from above, hardly able to play the part his sister could.

 _It’s so_ you _can Trace me instead_ , Astoria scowled. Without knowing Theodore’s fate after the Carrows’ stampede into his house, she was at a loss of how to proceed. Alecto enjoyed Astoria’s uncertainty and the stiffness of her body language. Though she made no clear threats, Alecto held everything tightly in place as the morning progressed normally in a world just above them.

“We lost a party of thirteen in the attack on your family. Nine had taken oaths. But some losses are greater than others. As Rabastan put it, ‘We have plenty of spare Mulcibers,’” Alecto said, and she paused at length.

 _Don’t lose yourself. Not now_ , Astoria resolved, though the name of Mulciber infuriated her.

“An oath means nothing if it isn’t kept. That’s the whole point of an oath, right, Astoria?”

“…Mm.”

“They broke their oath to the Dark Lord by acting without orders. And they got their due, yeah? You’ve a strong family, Astoria. It’s covetable. It’s no surprise to us that Ivory’s group failed.”

Alecto still feigned her benevolence, acting as though nothing was more important than getting a pebble out of her sandal as she spoke.

“I always been curious how you got close with our girls, since your conduct’s been disappointing, to say the least. It’s how you were raised, though. You believe what your parents tell you. Your blood-traitor parents aren’t here no more.”

Astoria wasn’t going to argue with Alecto. Not when her life depended on it. Theodore had been right about situations like this. “Fake it till you make it” had been his choice of words, so Astoria played as dumb as dumb could be. That puzzled gawk Daphne often displayed must have had an ulterior purpose. Yet Astoria had a bad feeling that her current threats were used to playing dumb themselves.

“Hmph. I think we’ve gone and scared her, Am.”

“‘We?’ You’re the one who’s done it, jumpin’ down there on the water,” Amycus said.

Alecto tilted her head jokingly at her brother, then returned her attention to Astoria, where it was unwanted.

“Astoria, we’re only here to figure out what happened to Theodore Nott Sr. He defied the orders to remain on call for another mission and went to Quennell Park. Did you see him there? About this high. Real old fart.”

“I think I saw an older wizard leave the ballroom during the attack. But something happened once he was outside… something in the woods… I was busy trying to help my cousin. I can’t say,” Astoria said, crafting as much fear and helpfulness as she could into her voice.

“I see. Amycus, bring us back up there,” Alecto said.

It was an awful somersault of a charm on Amycus’s part. Astoria would have rather traversed the cliffside with her bare hands. Theodore had miraculously held onto his life and was leaning against the back of the cottage with a black eye. The Carrows started chattering to each other, but Theodore’s voice rang out:-

“You told me you didn’t know anything about my dad, Astoria,” he said callously. “Now you tell her you _did_ see him?”

He was acting. Astoria was the other lead in the play.

“Theodore, I’m really not sure,” Astoria pleaded with him. “I just told her what I saw. I don’t even know if it was him or not… I’m sorry… I don’t know…”

“Yeah, right,” Theodore spat. “And here I thought you scarpered because they were Death Eaters. Maybe it was because you knew they would find out what _really_ happened to my dad!”

The Carrows lapped it all up.

“Think we found out why Mini-Malfoy couldn’t give clear answers,” the brother said under his breath. “Astoria’s the girl the Snatcher talked about. Nott’s kid don’t know anything. But Nott’s dead. I’ll go tell the Dark Lord. Here’s your stuff. You headin’ out from here?”

“Oh, unfortunately,” Alecto responded, taking her bag from him.

“Well, stay safe.”

 _Yes, kindly get the hell out of here_ , Astoria thought the longer she and Theodore had to keep up the act. Yet in spite of their verbal plans to leave, neither of the Carrows moved.

“If I’m the one who catches Potter, you owe me a new cauldron, Amycus.”

“I’ll do you better than a cauldron, but it ain’t gonna be you, Alliecat,” Amycus laughed.

“Tsk! No faith? Well, it won’t be you if you’re at home, now, will it?”

“Ah, who knows, if Potter flies over the house, I’ll shoot him down and throw him to Hestia’s plants. I always said we’re going to Turks n’ Caicos.”

“Yeah, yeah, keep dreaming.”

“One of us has to, Allie.”

Alecto went quiet for a moment and watched the rippled sea. Astoria had nowhere to move except back over the edge since she was supposed to be Theodore’s new enemy.

“Am?”

“Yeah?”

“How much are blood-traitors worth again?” Alecto asked, and panic swept upon Astoria.

“Think it’ll be round four or five Galleons,” said Amycus.

“That’s it?” Alecto snapped.

“Mudbloods’re worth more,” he shrugged.

“Hm. Well in that case, I think Greengrass needs guidance in these trying times,” Alecto said with a slick smile.

By Amycus’s wheeze, Astoria knew that what came next would not be good. She and Theodore were in too deep with their ruse of Nott Sr’s fate, and a sudden ease of animosity between them would put their safety on the line. Theodore had finally been cleared of suspicion, and Astoria couldn’t rip that from his hands. It was going to end poorly for her either way. Alecto moved to make a kidnapping look like something else.

“Where were you going with the suitcase, Astoria? I doubt it was into the Channel,” Alecto twittered once her brother Disapparated.

Before Theodore could do something incredibly stupid and give himself away, Astoria did something even worse. Giving one last fake glare at Theodore, she approached Alecto in a desperate huff.

“Could… Could you take me to Flora and Hestia? I wouldn’t have had to jump if I’d known you weren’t another one of Stretton’s.”

“ _Oh_ , you poor thing,” Alecto slurped, thrilled with Astoria’s apparent stupidity. “Stretton wouldn’t have dared come round us.”

She took Astoria’s wrist in her thick hand and gripped hard. Astoria silently threw all her thanks Theodore’s way, but he was too shocked to catch a thing. Alecto Disapparated, yanking Astoria with her. Everything could go wrong, and they could end up at Voldemort’s feet, but Astoria trusted that the witch had other goals. Alecto might have considered herself above Stretton and the rogues, but deep down, she wanted to find unsanctioned ways to impress the Dark Lord as well. Astoria knew that Alecto’s methods would be prolonged and indirect. It would become a battle of wills. Alecto wanted to do more than turn Astoria in for cash. She wanted to mould Flora, Hestia, and Astoria into the next generation of Death Eaters.

Alecto and Astoria arrived in the middle of a bustling street. Without the slightest chance to recover from the Apparition, Astoria braced Alecto’s side in a stumble. The traffic skidded round them at the last second, horns blaring and arms waving. The wind of the automobiles’ motion gave Astoria goose pimples and plastered her wet clothes tighter still.

 _It’s all on purpose_ , Astoria thought whilst Alecto dragged her across the noise of justified screaming and the danger of traffic. A few rows of traffic converged with each other and the clanging thud of wrecks rang under fire of Alecto’s illegal Memory Charms.

 _It’s my fault_ , Astoria panicked with her eyes on the auto wrecks. _If I hadn’t let her Apparate me_ , _they wouldn_ ’ _t have crashed_.

A few Muggles leapt from their broken machines to yell at Alecto and Astoria for being in the road.

… _She would have grabbed me anyway_ , Astoria remembered.

Once on the pavement, Alecto released Astoria but grabbed her suitcase. Astoria knew too little about Muggle society to trust in the effectiveness of calling for help, but some passers-by were alarmed by her wetness and sudden roadway appearance. They might have concluded she was being kidnapped. In fact, Astoria knew through Legilimency, some people _did_ think she had been kidnapped, so it was deeply shocking to watch them walk away from her and do nothing, nothing at all.

“ _It could be her mum_ ,” or “ _Someone else will see her_ ” were their favourite parting thoughts. Astoria could not believe it. There was plenty of attention on her and Alecto to warrant _someone_ doing _something_ … But they didn’t even need a Memory Charm to forget about the wrecks and the wet girl in the street. They all went on with their day.

At the street corner, Alecto assumed a discordant blend of friendliness and brutality, jamming her wand against Astoria’s spine and forcing her through the city.

“One of our favourite apothecaries is up that way,” she said nostalgically. “They have the best tansy tea in the country. We would take Hestia there to look at the fanged geraniums when she was a girl. You know her.”

“ _NICE TITS_!” screamed a Muggle from half a block away.

He was over forty, but it didn’t stop him from staring hungrily at Astoria’s wet shirt as he passed by. Another comment of his did not go unheard. Astoria was so terrified that she was nearly grateful to have Alecto there. But maybe that was part of the plan, too. Astoria noticed that she had lost the ability to walk at will under Alecto’s wand. Her neck craned.

“Don’t worry too much about this spell, Greengrass. It’s only temporary. I don’t want to chance losin’ you out here. Not a good place to be alone.”

That much Astoria had discerned, but Alecto’s spell made her feel even more defenseless in the throng of people. She caught a few more of their eyes due to her shirt’s unkind exposure, and no fewer than three of them suspected by her posture that she was being escorted at gunpoint. They still did nothing and raised no alarm, just stared at her body. What was wrong with these people? For the first time, Astoria stopped blaming herself for not controlling her Legilimency wilfully. Allowing it to get out of her hands had certainly opened her eyes to human nature.

They were no longer in the busiest part of the city and seemed to have moved to the dirtiest suburb. Astoria had not bothered to determine where she was because it wouldn’t matter. Flora and Hestia were from Cromer. This was not Cromer. There was no one to save her, and breaking away from Alecto on her own would only result in greater danger. Outside a large, red-brick building, Alecto used the Hot-Air Charm to dry Astoria’s damp clothes and seared her stomach, whether by accident or intention Astoria could not tell.

Alecto put her wand in her dress pocket, but it could not have been clearer that there was hot magic in her palm. She still held the suitcase and led Astoria in through a greasy, chipped door. Having suspected the huge, old place to be a Wizarding establishment, Astoria discovered it to be a Muggle hotel. The lobby was cramped by chairs with faded upholstery, and the tile they stood on was gritty with dirt from the street. The insect-ridden lighting fixtures flickered slightly when Alecto entered with Astoria, but it was daylight, so neither of the Muggles in the queue noticed.

Astoria felt Alecto’s magic in her tailbone and did not dare hint to the Muggles how much danger she was in, lest they become endangered, too. Alecto’s lack of an attack felt out of character. Perhaps she simply didn’t want a mess to clean up. She was trying to play herself off as an ordinary woman with an ordinary girl. There was music playing faintly in the lobby, seemingly coming from the ceiling. The cheesy ballad mismatched the peril Astoria was experiencing.

“ _How deep is your love_?” asked the ceiling music placidly. “ _How deep is your love_?”

One of the customers got his room key, and the queue moved forward.

“ _How deep is your love_?” the music now played with heavy static, sounding like the noise Rhiannon’s amplifier would make.

Astoria located the music speaker in the corner of the ceiling. It, like the personal fan the hotel greeter kept at her desk, seemed intolerant of Alecto’s proximity. The distortion worsened.

“ _–– world of fools breaking ––_ ”

The next customer got his room key, and Alecto stepped forward with Astoria.

“–– _let us be_ ––”

“Hello, can I help you?” asked the greeter, a bit distracted by her grossly malfunctioning fan.

“ _Imperio_ ,” Alecto answered without skipping a beat.

Astoria watched in defeat as the hotel employee went through the motions of a normal check-in to remain below suspicion of those surrounding them. It probably would not have mattered what the employee did, since the men outside the door were waiting to meet a prostitute and could not care less. It was like Astoria and Rhiannon had traded places in the world.

“–– _my deepest, darkest_ ––”

Alecto snatched all of the copies of one room’s key from the employee’s hands and, since a Muggle had touched them, wiped them vigorously with a spell before any further handling. She ushered Astoria down a grimy hallway to the lift. It ran with questionable electricity with them there; not all of its lights signalled, and it made troubling noises.

 _Do we really have to get in this thing_?

A wand at her back again was Astoria’s answer, so she stepped into the stuffy, electric cube. It smelt of sour cigarettes, and the tubelike lights flickered on the inside. Of course, Alecto took her all the way to the top level. A cheap trick, really. Astoria expected Alecto to make the lift malfunction to prove to her that Muggles were inferior. Perhaps because she was weary of the lift herself, Alecto did not do any such thing, and escorted Astoria to a room at the far end of the hall. She didn’t need the keys to get in like Muggles would have, but with all of them in her possession, no Muggle easily could. Alecto would make sure of Astoria’s captivity through magic, too. She circled round, scratching spells into the walls that ensured no sound would escape and no Muggle would enter.

The size of the room was hardly more than that of the furniture, and it had no adjoining toilet. The carpeting was dated and had more than one stain on it. Fingerprints dotted the wood of the chest of drawers, atop which sat a dusty television. The window had a view only to the dismal housing behind them. There was one bed, and on it was one cigarette burn. Cosmetics aside, the entire room felt damp and reeked of skunks. Considering that Alecto had stolen the room, she had received exactly what she paid for.

“Dirtier than what you’re used to? Sit down, Astoria.”

Astoria tried to avoid Alecto’s noxious eyes as she squeezed into the chair in the corner. The arms of it had a layer of grey dirt. Alecto’s wand, which was pointed at Astoria’s forehead, was rough-hewn and had very prominent grain lines. But she had to surrender her own wand. Astoria felt in her heart that her wand had not changed loyalty, if it had the capacity for loyalty in the first place.

“I want you to tell me all the nasty details of you and Slytherin’s Blot. How did our girls end up in her dorm at Hogwarts? Why’d that lead to them becoming public blood-traitors? And what on _earth_ am I hearing about that Mudblood being at Quennell Park?”

Astoria cleared her throat.

“I didn’t attend Hogwarts until I was twelve. I tested into my third year. Rhiannon Clarke was in my class. She had gone to the Headmaster about her former roommates, and he rearranged the rooms with us. I thought it was the alphabetical order that did it, but that didn’t make sense because Alexa Crover would have been there instead of me.”

“That right?” Alecto snarled. “Well, I watched old Dumbledore die with my own eyes. Serves him right for trying to pollute my House and my girls. What’d that filthy Mudblood do to make you sing? Brainwash the lot of you?”

“Ms Carrow, I was at the time firm in my position on blood status. Flora and Hestia said they needed money.”

Alecto cast a cruel spell across Astoria’s face. It swelled up instantly with pain.

“We did need money. My brothers and I can’t get jobs ’cause of people like you. I highly doubt my girls would have been as gooey over that Mudblood if not for you. As part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, we done our best to respect you Greengrasses in spite of you bein’ blood-traitors.”

 _Haven_ ’ _t given much respect to the Longbottoms and Abbotts, though, have you_? Astoria grimaced, thinking of Neville’s parents and Hannah’s mother. Astronomy class with them seemed eons ago. Alecto leaned away and rubbed the back of her neck from craning so far over Astoria, and her tattoo twisted its body under her hand.

“You were my girls’ first friend.”

It hurt to hear. Astoria had been cooped up at Quennell Park as a child, so all she had before coming to school were her relatives. Flora and Hestia, though, had come to school on time but kept to themselves. Rhiannon had had too much going on in her own life to befriend them, and the twins had not been able to form close relationships with their former roommates. Flora was terminally private, and Hestia was an eccentric. Astoria was proud to be their friend, even though their aunt was currently harming her.

“They were among my first friends, too,” Astoria said, but she didn’t know why she had let it bubble out of her.

Alecto practically oinked at the comment.

“Can’t imagine anything our girls were able to afford for your Christmases and your birthdays impressed you much, Greengrass.”

 _I never asked for gifts_. _They wanted to give them_ , Astoria thought sadly.

“I loved all their gifts,” she declared, and Alecto slapped her across the cheek.

“Flora and Hestia both opted to take _Muggle Studies_ once you arrived! They both received E’s on their O.W.L. for it. I can hardly be proud of that,” Alecto complained.

“Listen, I know what you think of me, but I never bothered with that class because I knew I wasn’t going to use it,” Astoria said deliberately.

“What _I_ think of _you_? Oh, Astoria, I’m really wondering what you think of me today. I never would’ve known Hestia was trying to go anywhere with that annoying habit in music had it not been for _you_. And our Flora, I never would’ve thought she had an ear at all. It’s a shame their talent was tainted with the Mudblood’s screech and propaganda.”

 _Propaganda, sure_ …

“We needed money, Astoria. We had to let it slide. But you’re going to sing for _me_ , aren’t you? Let’s think of your most offensive songs… Oh yes. ‘Transfusion’ bothered me the most, I think. You implied that Magic and Muggle blood could mix. What was the symbolism behind that? That Muggles would save our lives in the end? That we, as a people, would die out if not for the dirty, lowly, _Muggles_?”

“No…” said Astoria feebly.

“Let’s sing it, then. Let’s find the author’s intent.”

Only once she was at wandpoint, Astoria said the first line in a mere whisper, but was immediately met with one of the worst curses she had ever encountered.

“ _Celeri epiglottitis_.”

Her throat felt sorer than when she had been her sickest, and it swelled with such swiftness that she could feel the loss of air. Unable to think of plans or clever fixes, Astoria leaned far forward over her lap, choking and snorting, and groped at Alecto in hysterics.

“Aw. Does that hurt?”

Astoria had to cough, but it made it much worse, and she grabbed her burning throat, rubbing the skin on the outside only to make sure it was still there and not dissolved away.

“I know you think ill of me now, but you oughtta be glad it’s us who found you and not the Lestranges,” Alecto said.

Astoria yearned for water, for anything, but she also suspected water would make her choke to death. The pain was spreading up her nose, the only other way she could still breathe.

“Listen to me, Astoria. Me and you are of a superior race. Mixing up with the wrong crowd will not end well for you. I think that you could use the _self-esteem_ anyway.”

The curse was lifted. There was no other thought in Astoria’s mind except that the curse was gone, it was gone…

“I’m sorry, Astoria. You really need to learn one way or another,” Alecto said.

Astoria tried to recover from Alecto’s curses she had taken as best she could. If Draco could take curses to the face from Voldemort himself, if Rhiannon could survive a basilisk and her parents’ beatings, if Uncle Faunus was watching…

Alecto leaned forward to give off the scent of her breath and cheap perfume, and placed her fingers upon the blood dripping off Astoria’s chin.

“Pure as a baptism. And you’d sacrifice this to those Muggle men outside?”

“No.”

“Let’s hope not.”

Alecto grabbed Astoria by the hair on the nape of her neck and wrenched her out of the chair, slamming her face to the floor. Alecto sat all of her weight on Astoria’s back until she cried in pain. Alecto had the most fun she had had all day, rubbing Astoria’s face on the stained, dirty floor and calling her every name she could think of. The abuse felt like it had stretched on forever. Maybe it had not been that long. Alecto got off her back, leaving everything sore and crumpled, and hoisted Astoria upwards. She stared at her face, admiring the rug burn and the swelling.

“Poor thing,” Alecto whispered. “You poor thing. You must think you’re so misunderstood.”

Her taunting did little to Astoria, who had distanced herself from the room. She thought of Flora and Hestia’s father, who had allowed Alecto and Amycus to run his house. He wouldn’t parent the girls himself. What a pathetic wizard.

“Y’know, I didn’t go to Hogwarts till I was halfway through fourth year,” Alecto said. “It’s almost like you and me have something in common, right? Imagine that.”

Astoria met Alecto’s stare with a careful glance. Flora had been right. Things were worse when Alecto liked somebody.

“My family proudly served Gellert Grindelwald back when, but we were never well-off enough to send our young ones to Durmstrang since you have to pay tuition. Grindelwald came from there, and it’d been a long-time dream of my family’s. My parents saved up for years and years so me and Amycus could go there, and we grew up in a miserly sort of way, to tell you the truth. We didn’t have much at all. Grandmother made our wands with her own hands. Y’see this wand?”

Alecto held it in a duelling position rather than for show-and-tell. Astoria nodded quickly.

“You’ll see it again,” Alecto said. “Amycus and I have the same wand. Not just the same type of wood and core, neither. The wood’s cut from the same tree. The core’s snipped from the same animal. Aspen and Thestral tail hair. They say the Elder Wand had Thestral hair. You know, the bedtime story?”

Astoria nodded quickly again, since the wand was between her eyes.

“It was the greatest gift we ever got. Thestral. You ever met a Thestral wand before?”

“No, I haven’t…”

“Well, be honest, how did it feel?”

Astoria didn’t know what the right answer was. She went with, “Different.”

Alecto liked the word tremendously.

“They are different. And different from the Elder Wand, too. _Better_. Aspen’s the gateway between worlds. Old tales say if you go to the Underworld, you take aspen leaves with you. So you can come back.”

Alecto gave an untoward smile to Astoria. When she didn’t smile back, Alecto looked at the floor.

“What’s your wand, chinaberry? Sour cherry? It don’t feel right.”

“Cherry, Ma’am,” said Astoria in the smallest voice as Alecto played carelessly with the twig that had kept her alive thus far. Fortunately, Alecto did not try to damage or break the wand, as she was much too occupied with her own wand scraping across Astoria’s cheek.

“Me and Amycus can’t cast at each other,” Alecto said. “Spells meet in the middle and make fireworks. It was one of our favourite games to play at school.”

Astoria had heard of that phenomenon somewhere before, but she couldn’t recall when or where.

“We showed Grandmother the trick, too. Made her happy. Grandmother liked us, which was good, because Mum and Dad didn’t. They married because they had to, and they had us because they had to. And we grew up bein’ told things we had to do, too. Dad was always on Amycus’s case to study and get better at magic. Made him duel with him. I felt so bad because Am didn’t stand a chance against Dad. And Mum, she was always remindin’ me how ugly I was, how no amount of make-up or magic is gonna fix this. How I’d never attract a husband with all my acne, or how fat I was, or how I didn’t _smile_. You name it, she said it. After a while, I just accepted she was right.

“Me and Am were pretty happy to be away from our parents during school. When we were gone, they baked up our kid brother as backup because they thought we were gonna be failures. But even our rotten parents made sure me and Amycus went to Durmstrang. Oh, Astoria, it was such an honour. We was the first in our family! And the school’s amazing! They teach Dark Arts there, and there’s no Mudbloods. There’s students from all over the Continent, so the teachers use magic to write in all sorts of languages on the board. I mean, the other students don’t speak English, and they were all richer than us, so we didn’t ever have no friends. Well, actually, we were bullied pretty bad… But still, it was _luxurious_ there. We could put up with it, most the time. We’d never been happier or prouder. But do you know what happened?”

The question, Astoria realised after a pause, was oddly not hypothetical.

“N-No…”

“Oh,” said Alecto. “Guess.”

They stared at each other.

“I don’t… know.”

Alecto slinked closer.

“ _Guess_.”

“I –– I’m not sure. I-It got too expensive?”

A curse rammed Astoria’s head down hard, and she heard noise in her joints.

“D’you think anyone with less money than you is a _peasant_ , Greengrass? D’you think we’re lesser than you? Our whole line is the purest of all the Sacred Twenty-Eight. _How dare you_! Our family _worked_ to send us there whilst yours sat on your fortune! That wasn’t what happened at all! We were sent home!”

The curse still rattling the back of Astoria’s head was even more cacophonous in combination with Alecto’s chesty voice. Alecto wiped her eyes and brow with her sleeve. Astoria hated her, but it was excruciatingly obvious that Alecto had nobody to talk to. She only ever had Amycus or captive audiences, and right now, Astoria was _literally_ captive.

“Durmstrang never said we were expelled. No one wrote it down, so we could go somewhere else. But we weren’t allowed back there. I couldn’t believe it. Our whole future had been taken away. Our entire life, everything our family worked for. So the whole damn train ride _and_ the boat trip, we tried to come up with something to say. And there was nothing. There was no explanation our parents were gonna take, truth or lie or anything!

“You know, they say Thestral cores don’t work for people who can’t accept they’re gonna die one day. And did we ever accept it. We decided we’d jump into the North Sea before we’d say Durmstrang kicked us out. We charmed our ankles together and tied our luggage to sink ourselves. We’d go one of the ways our honourable ancestors were martyred –– drowning. But we didn’t drown, even with the luggage. Even with our legs tied. Death spared us because we weren’t allowed to die. We was pure-blood! We had a purpose on this earth together. And d’you know who pulled us out? The _Rowle_ family, long-term Death Eaters. So we understood our purpose, and we went home and went to Hogwarts with all the Mudbloods. But it was the end of what we really wanted. Hogwarts is my least favourite place on this whole ruddy _planet_. So what makes _you_ like it so much, Astoria? Mudblood boys? Mudblood girls?”

Astoria shook her head.

“I don’t… I really don’t like it…”

“You’re lyin’ to me,” Alecto said, a curse bubbling at the tip of her wand. “You went to Hogwarts and got close with Slytherin’s Blot. Awful close.”

 _Alecto doesn’t know about Hestia and Rhiannon_ , Astoria realised gratefully.

“Is that why the Blot was at Quennell Park, like the Snatcher said?”

“She was there.”

Another pang of pain landed right on top of the swelling.

“ _You stupid Mudsucker_! Our kind makes up less than ten percent of the world’s population, and you choose to pollute yourself with mud? To give in to the wretched beings that have tortured, imprisoned, and killed us?”

 _How many witches have you killed under Voldemort?_ burned Astoria on the inside.

“It’s our little Flora I worry the most for…” Alecto softened, and she stroked her chapped hand against the injuries she had caused Astoria. “Hestia’s always been our difficult one, but it’s Flora that’s speaking wrong for the first time.”

Astoria looked through the window to the grey-green sky. It would storm soon. She did not know how long she would be in this tiny hotel room, but she was at least keeping Alecto away from Flora and Hestia. If she looked at her circumstances any other way, she might have broken under the woman’s grip. After prodding her injured face enough, Alecto amused herself by going through Astoria’s pockets. She uncovered counterfeit Muggle money and tutted at Astoria disappointedly.

“Oh. What’s this, a mirror?”

Alecto had drawn the Foe-Shard out. Astoria suppressed a smirk at her luck: since Alecto was the closest threat, the Foe-Shard projected her image just like a real mirror. Alecto held it up to Astoria, expecting an answer.

“Oh, that. That broke off one of my telescopes at home. It’s part of a honeycomb mirror.”

She was counting on Alecto having no idea what a Foe-Glass was and that no other enemy would approach them.

“ _Specialis Revelio_ ,” Alecto said, and Astoria pondered the consequence of having lied.

Oddly enough, the Foe-Shard did not give off any indication of being a charmed object. It was so small, heavily traded, and damaged that Alecto’s big bad spell had not worked. In the scope of things, losing the Foe-Shard would not have been that bad, but Astoria was glad when Alecto threw it to the floor indifferently. Then she pulled Astoria’s suitcase forward. It had been slightly Extended, but it hadn’t been made Impervius to water, so what few clothes and necessities she had were sodden. Alecto Vanished the wet food away. She kept Astoria’s toothbrush soiled with ocean water. She pulled out Uncle Faunus’s pipe, though, and Astoria went rigid.

“Is this also sentimental? _Specialis Revelio_ ,” Alecto cast, and nothing suspicious happened.

“It’s just stuff that was left in the house,” Astoria admitted.

“Aw, stuff from your family?”

Astoria was now certain Alecto was going to break all that she had left, so she was shocked when Alecto dropped the pipe back into the suitcase. Alecto didn’t even bother to disturb the other items, which looked like rubbish to her. She kicked the suitcase under Astoria’s chair. After casting a shimmering, blanket-like barrier atop the nasty hotel bed, Alecto sat down, straddling the corner.

“Our parents were not the family I’d pick,” Alecto reiterated.

Astoria marvelled at the irony. Flora and Hestia despised Alecto and Amycus. The elder Carrows hadn’t learned what _not_ to do based on their own experience. They just repeated the cycle of abuse.

“It was made clear to us that we weren’t their notion of ideal pure-bloods. Once Grandmother died that’s when their true colours showed. We was almost seventeen when Mum and Dad said we’d been a waste of _food_. A waste of their sacred name. You’re pure-blood. Were you ever told things like that? No? I didn’t think so, not a Greengrass…”

Alecto shut her eyes and wrung her hands close to her face.

“We didn’t last too long at Hogwarts, neither,” she breathed into her fingers, and Astoria’s reaction was more a bad taste in her mouth than a thought in her mind.

“We’d almost finished sixth year when Mum and Dad offed themselves in one go.”

Alecto peeked open her painfully clamped eyes and watched Astoria closely for any sign of support. Astoria was frightened and took the cue to eek out an “I’m sorry.”

“We were sorry, too,” Alecto said with strain. “We were of age, but they left our kid brother behind. He was only five years old. I know they did that to us on purpose. Our lives _really_ stopped then. We had to come home. We raised our brother. We were out of money by the time he could’ve gone to Hogwarts, but we tried our best teachin’ him magic. We honestly tried, Astoria. And he hated us. He never appreciated us. We dropped everything and raised his sorry arse. And one day he came in and _blamed us_ for Mum and Dad’s deaths, and then left the house. There was nothing worse he could’ve said to us after all we did for him. He had no idea what we sacrificed. He ran off with some Blodwyn girl. All I could say was thank Merlin she was pure-blood, but she thought she was above me and Amycus. Wouldn’t talk to us. Well, she got pregnant like she might have got the morning paper. She didn’t want us involved at all. She was trying to distance our brother from us. Well, she bleedin’ died, too! So there we were again. Raising her twins.”

Alecto wiped her contorted face.

“I know it’s hard for you to picture, Astoria, but you can’t keep a family of five fed on Knockturn money. We had some left over from our work in the First War. We could send the girls to school. We wanted the best for them, ’cause we couldn’t do it for our brother. Now Flora and Hestia don’t like us, neither. Everyone thinks they’re better than us the second they step out the door,” Alecto sniffled.

Something struck involuntarily, because Astoria was a nice person.

“Alecto, I––” Astoria started.

“ _SILENCIO_!” Alecto screeched, and she kept it that way.

Astoria soon realised that even though life’s circumstances had not been kind to Alecto, she revelled in them where others might re-evaluate their lives. Alecto used her woes not as a point of resilience, introspection, or development, but as a pile of excuses. Superficially, Alecto was able to excuse _all_ of her present and future actions by simply pointing a finger at her past. However, she didn’t _truly_ believe in her innocence; she sought approval of her actions by turning them outward.

“What would you have done?” she kept asking the now-speechless Astoria, and Astoria’s muteness would allow Alecto to make up whatever answer she desired.

“What would you have done,” “what would you have done.”

Astoria did not know what she would have done in Alecto’s circumstances, but she knew it was _not this_ , or _not that_ –– and most often, she doubted she would ever find herself in such situations at all. Though Alecto could not control her parents’ behaviour, she could have controlled her own violent rages whilst raising her younger brother. She could have adopted a more empathetic worldview and refused to become a Death Eater. Had she done this, she might have had a healthy relationship with her younger brother and his twin daughters. By supporting them, they would have supported her. But Alecto had done none of that. She made no effort to control her violent temper. She never tried to do good by others. She had woven herself into what was comfortable so that she would never have to change. Alecto’s comfort came from being a victim; she felt special that she and her twin had been chosen by the gods to be smited.

“What would you have done?”

 _I would not have hurt others for fun_.

That night, Alecto bound Astoria to the chair with magic and went down the hall to shower. She was gone for over an hour; Astoria deduced that Alecto was using _Aguamenti_ the whole time rather than using the Muggles’ water supply. Alecto came back with red blotches all over her skin, so she must have conjured the water hot. She Scoured the hotel bed and hard surfaces nonstop for twenty minutes and used a Hot-Air Charm that made the room stifling. She then picked up a dark, plastic device from the chest of drawers and pressed it. The television awoke. It was loud with static, and the picture warped with striped bands of colour. The light from it glowed bright on Astoria’s skin. Alecto stepped away from the machine, and the picture and sound both cleared up. It looked like there was a news report on the screen. There was a Muggle lady in a blue blazer standing with an oblong microphone. She talked a lot about Northern Ireland. Then she switched to local happenings, none of which were good.

“You’re right in front of the electricity, and it’s working,” scoffed Alecto from the bed after the graphic news reports were over. “I doubt it’s ’cause you’re wandless. I never would’ve thought electricity’d work round a Greengrass. Must be because you’re full of Squibs.”

She shut the television off and walked back over to Astoria, snatching her right wrist up. Alecto shut her eyes, exhaled slowly, and rubbed her thumbs over Astoria’s veins and tendons.

“Your magic is very diffuse,” Alecto concluded, and released Astoria’s kneaded wrist.

 _I think I knew that_ , reflected Astoria.

“Your life’s been easy. Don’t worry. It’ll wake up,” Alecto both reassured and threatened.

Astoria had to sleep on the dirty floor. Alecto had not spared her a pillow or blanket, so Astoria rolled up the jacket from her suitcase to lift her head. She had no voice and no hope, but dammit, she wasn’t going to get a neck cramp, too. Her family always came first in her thoughts, naturally followed by Draco and Rhiannon, but it also began to dawn on her what sort of anxiety she must have given Theodore. It felt like a poor decision to leave with Alecto when she had been so close to getting to Professor Sinistra, but then again, she knew Alecto would have taken Astoria hostage in a dangerous fight if she had not come quietly.

 _Well, I did defeat Lofthouse_ , Astoria considered, but she couldn’t keep picking off Death Eaters if she wanted them to stop being so interested in attacking her. The only noise she could make was to exhale. She was trapped. Alecto did indeed make the room Muggle-proof, so housekeeping wouldn’t notice the room had ever existed. Astoria zoned out at the brown water damage on the ceiling. There was no reason to expect sleep with the loud machine that cooled the air buzzing and clanging constantly. The electric lights never went out outside, leaving the room unbearably bright and the sky sadly hazy. Alecto had quite the arsenal of spells for someone who had only passed three O.W.L.s in her day and rested peacefully in spite of the constant noise. If Astoria moved too much, of course, Alecto would be ready to make some more bruises. It must have been between four and five in the morning that Astoria got any rest whatsoever. Then, at eight A.M., she went back to being under Alecto’s thumb.

“Aw, Astoria, you’ve barely taken off the sleep,” Alecto sneered, hovering over her.

The rules were beaten into her over the course of the day. She was only allowed to walk to the lavatory with Alecto, and this was a privilege awarded only four times a day. The first time Alecto left the room, Astoria did everything in her power to get out, but her power consisted of two scrawny arms against a barricade of magic. The skunk smell wafted in through the grate in the floor constantly. After Alecto went out again for another patrol of the city, a man pounded on the room’s door so hard that it shook. Alecto must have weakened the Muggle-Repelling Charm on the room just enough to let this happen. The stranger was not part of the hotel staff, nor was he a policeman. He said, “I know you’re in there, and I know you’re cheap.” The event frightened Astoria worse than Alecto herself could.

When Alecto returned, she had brown paper bags full of canned Muggle food. The majority of it was oxtail soup, which required water to eat. Astoria watched, hungry but without any appetite, as Alecto cut a metal can in half with a spell and sloughed the contents into a bowl. She chose to add tap water from down the hall, stirring the chunks without a word, and handed it to Astoria cold. Not two hours later did Astoria get very, very ill. Alecto gave Astoria back her wand to clean up the room, simply _daring_ her to try to fight in her state. From a piece of parchment, Alecto read all the things found in Muggle water. She had made Astoria sick on purpose.

“Lead seems to be the big one,” Alecto said as Astoria scrubbed the floor. “I can hardly pronounce the rest of these. Let’s see… aluminium, anti-mony, arsenic, boron, ch-chromium, cyanide, nickel, nitrate, erm, pesticides, er, tetra-chloro-ethene… and tri-halo-meth-ane. If it’s any comfort, I _do_ think that if faecal matter gets into the water, the Muggles try to do something about that, but back in the day, they just drank it and hoped for the best. Like fish! See, illnesses float about their water. They feed their children with this stuff. That’s why they grow up to be so daft.”

 _Just shut up_ , Astoria begged, not wishing to know what any of those words meant as she continued to be sick.

“Clean as you go, Astoria,” Alecto said, immune to the view of human suffering.

Eventually, Alecto got tired of the smell, took Astoria’s wand back, and locked Astoria in the lavatory to vomit, where Muggles pounded on the door all night and maintenance was unable to unlock the room. The door had been thoroughly cursed, and there was no indication that Alecto was outside at all. It was no mystery where Hestia had developed her claustrophobia anymore. The Muggles could not get in, and Astoria could not get out. She would die here, in a little botched corner of reality.

Astoria washed her clothes in the sink and showered in the cold, dirty water. Alecto stormed later when Astoria was still in a towel. She walked her all the way down the hall like that, so that the sleazy men at the top of the grimy stairwell might entertain thoughts. Astoria had no voice and no clothes. She couldn’t take it, and she spit at them. The men all ignited with ugly words for her, came down, and grabbed Alecto. Something very, very bad happened to them the second they touched her, and Astoria did not care to take a second glance. They deserved it. Alecto scrubbed the spots where they had come into contact with her clothes.

The smell of the oxtail soup instantly made Astoria nauseated again, and she opted not to eat. Alecto Vanished Astoria’s food and ate a nicer, boxed meal she had picked up on her outing. She held out a clear bottle, shook it, and spoke to Astoria like she was a toddler.

“This is a bottle of water. It ain’t much cleaner than what comes from the spigot. It comes in _plastic_. Plastic can’t be destroyed once it’s made without polluting everything. But can you blame the Muggles? Of course you can. They know better.”

 _I don’t care_. _I don’t care_. _I just don’t care_.

“You probably wonder how I know all this. I been working hard to make lesson plans. I’m gonna be your new Muggle Studies teacher. Yes, at Hogwarts. What, you didn’t think I’d put you in school? What kind of monster do you take me for? A young witch needs her education! And this year, there won’t be any Mudbloods overcrowding our school and holding us back. The student-teacher ratio is much better. It’ll be like Durmstrang. I’m so excited! Here, have the bottle.”

Astoria dropped it into her suitcase for when her thirst would overcome her fear of the water. She had already learnt to read Alecto’s moods, and this was one of the better ones. Alecto chatted about Voldemort’s Ministry takeover and departmental changes.

“We’re tryin’ our best to make a government that actually serves its people. It doesn’t make any sense to have all them laws in place for the sake of the Muggles. You don’t even realise it, but so much of our behaviour is dictated by staying out of _their_ way. It’s idiotic. Here, I forgot to give this to you. You’ll like it! It’s just as I’ve promised.”

It was another letter from the Ministry.

> Dear Miss Greengrass,
> 
> I am writing to redact an earlier communication requesting your presence at a disciplinary hearing at the Ministry of Magic. We are in the process of amending the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, and your offense falls within the timeframe of those to be excused. No further action is required on your part.
> 
> Hoping you are enjoying the lovely weather outdoors,
> 
> Yours sincerely,
> 
> **_Mafalda Hopkirk_ **
> 
> Improper Use of Magic Office
> 
> Ministry of Magic

Astoria was indifferent to the news by this point. She did not care about things like going to court. She wanted clean water, real food, a bed, a place to walk, and fresh air. She wanted to stop having flashbacks of her sister’s Splinched arm and her cousin’s crumpled corpse.

This was only the second of August. Well, if Alecto kept her promise, then Astoria had twenty-nine days until school started. Then what? She didn’t know, but whatever it was, it wasn’t this. Alecto put the television on again and started shuffling through the programmes. She left it on an unsettlingly graphic film.

“This is Muggle entertainment,” Alecto said in disgust.

 _But my suffering entertains you_ , Astoria thought.

When the violent film ran its ugly course, Alecto turned the machine off. Because of Astoria’s intolerance to the Muggle water, Alecto gave her the condensed soup without any water at all. Astoria smushed the cold, gelatinous brown down in her bowl as flat as she could. This continued each morning and night. Alecto had two wands and would not conjure her a single drop of water. Unlike Alecto, who took scalding, hour-long showers each night with clean, conjured water, Astoria was only allowed to shower in the Muggle water every third day. Alecto removed any hope of escape; she sealed Astoria off thoroughly to the world and went about her workday. Astoria hoped that her captivity was still giving the twins time away from Alecto. It was her only consolation.

It became apparent that Alecto did not want to be here, though not to the same extent as Astoria. The order from Voldemort to remain onsite in the city in search of Harry Potter must have still been in effect. One night, Alecto woke Astoria’s sore-shouldered slumber with the sound of phlegmy, snorting cries. Under any other circumstance, Astoria would have been the first person to reach out to someone and offer support, yet this was Alecto Carrow. Initially, Astoria thought this was an insincere display intended to wake her. Thus, she was unnerved when Alecto met her open eyes with shock, hid her red face in her sleeve, and cast the Bewitched Sleep Spell, “ _Somnodurus_ ,” in Astoria’s face. It was the best sleep Astoria had yet. The incident happened again the next night, only this time, Alecto would not bless her with the spell.

“You like watching me cry, Greengrass?” Alecto spit as Astoria looked at her with tired and confused eyes. “You cry all the time. You’re not above me.”

Astoria had no voice. She rubbed a knot in her neck and rolled over. Alecto blew her nose loudly, and Astoria was frankly too afraid of her to try to sleep through the sound. Astoria wished the dedication it took to hold her prisoner would bore Alecto and interfere with her orders. In spite of Alecto’s obvious emotional instability, it never did. She merely kept Astoria cursed during the day and went about her duties. It was intentional that Alecto kept Astoria in a rundown Muggle hotel as opposed to any number of nice places she could have Imperiused her way into. Alecto was optimistic that Astoria would develop distaste for Muggle society. On the other hand, the Ministry might increase the cash reward for blood-traitors any day, and then Astoria would be sent to Azkaban whilst Alecto went home rich. Well, maybe not.

The Death Eater-run Ministry was more concerned with rendering Muggle-borns jobless, homeless, and imprisoned than with one teenaged blood-traitor in Alecto Carrow’s possession. Did that make Alecto release Astoria? Oh no. Quite the contrary. Alecto started to force her “friendship” upon her in earnest. Alecto’s idea of friendship was to alternate between beating Astoria and forcing her to have her hair brushed and plaited. All this time she kept her Silenced, and Astoria wished Alecto would go occupy herself with a toy doll so she wouldn’t be forced to be one anymore.

Astoria’s Silent-but-living state was addicting to Alecto, who still used the opportunity to overshare. Alecto was a pathological approval-seeker, so no matter Astoria’s actual opinion, Alecto would charm her head to nod at things she would never endorse. She spoke about the Muggle-borns she was rounding up, telling Astoria that her favourite thing was to _separate_ them. She relished in taking Muggle-born children away from their clueless, helpless parents. She targeted mixed couples so that one would go to Azkaban and one would be left behind. Alecto responded to Astoria’s tears by hoisting her entire body up over her shoulder and patting her back, which was utter mockery. Astoria had but a sliver of Alecto’s magical strength, so when she struggled in misery, Alecto nearly strangled her. She was so messed up.

About thirteen days in, Astoria got ringworm all over her feet from the mildewed floor. At fourteen days, Astoria learned her helplessness and stopped trying to get out. At fifteen days, Astoria saw some of the things Alecto wrote home, and she stopped saying her nightly prayers.

On the eighteenth night, if Astoria had counted right, she was not able to fall asleep at all. Usually, she got about two hours on the floor and another three hours on the bed once Alecto went out for the day. This night, Alecto had rolled onto her back and snored louder than the variety of Muggle motors outside. Although Alecto’s sleep was not undisturbed (she kept snorting and hacking herself into lighter sleep), Astoria’s was non-existent, and being awake for so long had left her in need of the facilities. After an hour of trying to pretend that it was quiet, that she was somewhere else, and that her bladder wasn’t full, Astoria couldn’t take it anymore. If she didn’t get Alecto to take the charm off the door and let her down the hall, she’d pee on the floor. Astoria stood up and walked to the lumpy lady on the lumpy bed.

“Erm… Alecto…” Astoria muttered, feeling completely stupid.

Alecto was probably going to wake up and strangle her to death. Oh well. At least she’d get to pee.

“Alecto. Hey,” Astoria said, giving a gentle nudge considering how evil the bitch was.

“Alecto.”

“ _Bah_! Merlin!” Alecto shouted, her eyes flying open at the last nudge.

Astoria withdrew her hand faster than a mosquito from a swat, but Alecto still grabbed her by the shoulders and dug her nails in. If possible, her glare was even worse when she was tired.

“Please. I need to go to the lavatory, just for a minute. I wouldn’t have woken you, but I’m trapped in here, and––”

“ _Don’t you think I bloody know you’re trapped in here, you stupid bitch_?” Alecto seethed, and she hit Astoria clean across the face. “You used your privileges today, and now you think you can wake me up at any old hour? You think I’m your slave or something, you ugly little toff?”

Astoria fended off the contagion of Alecto’s anger. She could have responded with any number of things. Instead she said, “If I don’t go, it’ll be in the corner of this room. I’ve been holding off waking you for an hour. I didn’t do this on purpose.”

“Right you didn’t!” Alecto spat in her eye. “I’ve an early patrol shift. Must be a foreign concept to your rich, lazy arse.”

She grabbed Astoria roughly by the arm, dragged her to the door, and undid the curses on it. Alecto had cut off Astoria’s circulation by the time they reached the lavatory down the hall. She shoved Astoria inside and slammed the door. Alecto then cast curses into the door, and Astoria knew she was trapped again. It was so tiny and gross here, but at least she wouldn’t have to worry about the humiliation of peeing on the floor. Astoria heard Alecto stomp back down the hall.

She’d be here forever, so she set some small, paper-like towels on the floor to sit on and leaned against the wall, crying quietly. Maybe by the time this was all over, she wouldn’t feel the need to cry anymore. She wouldn’t feel _anything_. The thought that she was permanently becoming someone else bothered her deeply. The only hint that she ever fell asleep was the nightmare she had. She jolted awake, knowing the pain in her hips, shoulders, back, and neck the moment she was conscious again. A thunk at the door had been the interruption of her poor sleep. Astoria first thought it must be a Muggle staying in the hotel, and of course, there would be the whole event with them trying to break into the lavatory again…

No, wait, it was Alecto. She was undoing the curses that kept Astoria trapped. It must still be night, and that frightened Astoria, for it meant that Alecto was not able to go back to sleep. Was she coming to _kill_ her? Was death merely a long time coming? Astoria had thought she was growing impassive to the abuse, but for some reason she was terrified of the consequences that awaited her. Her skin prickled as Alecto cracked open the door, and Astoria saw the wand in her face.

“Out. Now,” Alecto said grumpily as Astoria stood frozen with fear.

Astoria was, at first, relieved when Alecto merely Mobilised her out to the hall. However, Mobilising her wasn’t the only spell she cast. Astoria found her body rigid and her hands and legs unusable. She started leaning towards the torn-papered wall from lack of balance and tried to use her knees to not fall flat on her face.

Alecto walked into the lavatory. Astoria’s body made a noise on the way down, and she grew fearful that somebody –– no, damn it, not just anybody, _a male Muggle_ –– would find her here, paralysed. For as little as she could actually move, she seemed perfectly able to shake in fright. How dare Alecto. How dare Alecto put Astoria in these situations where she looked at Muggles like savages. How dare Alecto make Astoria want _her_ instead of the Muggles.

A blood-curdling scream came from the lavatory, and Astoria jumped in response. It was the jump that made her realise she could move again; Alecto’s magic had broken. The screaming continued, a hybrid between fear and pain. Whatever was making Alecto scream like that could be something that would hurt Astoria, too. Had Voldemort Apparated straight into the sink? Was that really Alecto? She hadn’t imagined Alecto Carrow could make sounds so aggrieved. What in the world happened? Astoria stood up uncertainly.

Alecto’s was the only voice coming from behind the door. With no binding magic on her, Astoria was strongly tempted to start running and never look back. However, she was practically a Muggle without a wand. A teenaged Muggle in a big city at night.

Alecto’s screams blackened into weeping. There was no other sound in the lavatory, but Astoria heard a few Muggles stir in their rooms. She had to think fast. She was going to take the chance that Alecto was alone. She would take advantage of Alecto’s crying to get her wand back and _run_. Astoria widened her stance.

The door had never had the chance to be locked, and when Astoria opened it, she wanted it closed again.

 _What is this_?

As hypothesised, Alecto was alone. She was slumped on the floor with her hands on either side of her head, heaving out breath, tears, and shivers. Astoria, too, found herself shivering all over again as another seam in her old world tore open. Alecto buried her death-white face in Astoria’s clothing. Astoria realised that she had her voice again. She could barely use it. She could barely move.

“B-Boggart,” Alecto wept.

“Okay, Alecto… I’ll need my wand…”

“ _Boggart_.”

“…Okay, Alecto.”

Cautiously, in half an embrace, Astoria drew her wand from the spare pocket of Alecto’s night-robes. Alecto put up no fight, only made sound. With her wand back in her hands, Astoria’s magic crackled like a hearth. Her first instinct was to fire a curse and escape, but Alecto, so helpless, was proving psychologically impossible to curse. A boggart could make sense, Astoria considered. Boggarts were created from human fear, and Astoria had spent enough time in terror in this tiny, dank bathroom. Sure, it was the right environment, the right conditions…

Astoria’s proximity to the chaos and the fact that Alecto’s face was buried in fabric led the boggart to change to fit Astoria’s fear. That rendered the being thankfully invisible. Nothing else happened. Astoria most feared deception, but she was already in the company of a professional liar.

Alecto continued to cry on the floor. Astoria was used to Alecto holding her violently tight, but she had never been held tightly in desperation. Astoria shook free. Her escape was almost in reach. She couldn’t tell where the boggart was anymore, but from her home lesson with Professor Lupin, she knew it had to be right in front of her. The boggart wouldn’t pursue Astoria, though; it was no fun to be invisible, and Alecto was an easy victim. Astoria backed away enough for it to change again, but even without Alecto’s renewed, raw screaming, Astoria didn’t want to see the other form, either.

She said, “ _Riddikulus_.” It was an inane attempt, for there was no way to fix this. Yet Astoria felt that she was the responsible creator of this particular spirit. Oh, God, why couldn’t she _just leave Alecto_?

Hardly processing what she was doing, Astoria held her breath and stepped closer than she cared to so that the boggart would simply have to change back to her own fear again. Before it could evade her aim, Astoria fired her wand with all the pent-up magic she had been carrying in this hotel.

“ _RIDDIKULUS_!”

There was a swishing sound, and the boggart was transformed into a bottle labelled “Veritaserum,” which rolled across the floor and turned to dust. Alecto remained sobbing on her hands and knees.

“ _Thank you_.”

Were Astoria’s ears still playing tricks on her after the boggart? Did Alecto say what she thought she said? It didn’t matter, Astoria told herself, it didn’t matter. Anyone would thank her for that. Astoria suddenly freed herself from those non-existent, inexplicable chains and zipped down the hall. She burst into the room that had been her prison, grabbed her suitcase of pitiful contents, and ran back out towards the door labelled “EXIT” in glowing red. Her footsteps were thunderous down the stair, and the night’s coolness was startling compared to the humidity of the building.

It only took a moment of quiet thought for Astoria to regret not cursing Alecto, to regret not taking her aspen wand. Alecto was sure to attract the attention of Muggles. They would be slaughtered. Maybe everyone in the vicinity would be slaughtered.

 _How could I be so careless_?

Thinking fast, Astoria did the safest thing she could. Pointing her wand dead at the building behind her, she said, “ _Repello Muggletum_.” Shortly after, the windows lit up. The guests were waking. They would walk out, go somewhere else. Hopefully, lives would be spared. Astoria couldn’t stick round to find out. She picked a road and started running. Her wand was out, teeming, ready to smash any threat against the pavement. Perhaps less expected than the threat of Muggles was the threat of wizards. One had Apparated right into her beeline, likely having Traced her underage magic.

“ _Bombarda_!” she screamed, throwing down her suitcase.

“ _Protego_!” the wizard, a Death Eater, responded.

“ _Celeri epiglottitis_!” she cast, but he dodged it, and it hit an obnoxiously bright street lantern.

“ _Petrificus totalus_!”

“ _Protego_!” she met the blast angrily. “ _Diffindo_!”

“ _Ach_! _Cruci––_ ”

“ _Expelliarmus_!”

 _Damn it to hell_.

Though biffed across the shoulder, the wizard dodged her spell. Something about his magic seemed familiar, and yet it was not. Astoria was very poor at “sensing” magic. They circled closer in their duel. She could only hope that no more Death Eaters would arrive, especially Amycus, or she’d have to try her best to blow up the whole street.

“ _Cru––_ ”

“ _BOMBARDA_!”

The wizard went airborne, soaring backwards like a piece of paper to the wind, and the force of her spell knocked his hood off.

 _Oh my God_.

A long, white-blonde ponytail flung out from the cloak. Astoria aimed again in the city’s brightness and caught the fool before he could crack his back on the concrete. He floated there for only a split second before cutting himself free of her Levitation and getting ready for a deep curse. Then he recognised her the way she recognised him.

“Merlin’s magic.”

“Yeah,” Astoria snapped. “Who’d you think I was, Lucius, _Harry Potter_?”

“ _Shh_ , do not say that name, you thoughtless––”

“Thoughtless? Me? Let’s talk about you, about twenty-five years ago, sealing your family’s fate,” she sneered. “So how are we going to do this? You take me to Azkaban, or you bring me to the Death Eater social?”

“ _Would you be quiet_.”

Astoria was having none of this. She had her wand in one fist and her anger in the other. Lucius ruffled his feathers and sauntered on over to her, looking down each alley and roadway.

“Oh, lower your wand, Greengrass. Heaven’s sake.”

Lucius drew his hood back up and came within four feet of her, bringing the smell of Malfoy Manor with him that Astoria didn’t know she needed. Based on his robes, Lucius had been stripped of his rank. Like Alecto, he was apparently relegated to Muggle-born round-up and Harry hunting. The bastard.

“Are there others of your kind?” she asked, for it was certainly a relevant question.

“No others in this area.”

Astoria picked her battered suitcase back up.

“You knew I was round here, didn’t you?” she glowered. “You’re working with Alecto. Theodore saw me kidnapped. I’m sure Theodore told Draco. So you knew Alecto had me.”

“I knew Alecto did have you at one point,” Lucius corrected, but his correction made her angrier.

“You would’ve let me––”

“ _Shut it_ , _girl_. Be _quiet_ ,” Lucius said, looking over his shoulders. “Where is it that you need shelter?”

It took no thought.

“Aurora Sinistra’s. Hogsmeade.”

“Take my arm.”

As Death Eaters went, Lucius was, at least, far more helpful than the Obliviated Nott Sr. Had it been any other Death Eater, Astoria might be dead.

 _But this doesn’t make up for_ –– she started to think; however, the heave of Apparition took most of her thoughts for a spin. They Apparated a considerable distance outside of Hogsmeade, and Lucius hurried her along.

“Caterwaul at night,” Lucius explained tersely. “I’m exempt, but I need to get you through.”

Astoria’s skin embraced the mountain air, however chilly. There was no more city, no more hotel. They hurried to the doorstep of a picturesque log and weatherboard house on the edge of town. It had a black-shingled roof slanted so sharply that one could ride a sled down it in the snow, if not for the many skylights. There were more skylights in the roof than windows on the house, and a familiar warmth enveloped Astoria’s heart. The number of rooms could not have been surmised from the outside, for the house had many bows, bays, and mismatched additions, some piling around a handsome turret with magical telescopes sticking out of the top. Less charming aspects of the house were its unkempt brambles of roses and the upside-down ram’s skull over the painted purple door. Those could be ignored easily, at least by Astoria. Lucius was masked, though his offended scowl could be felt.

“Never mention this, _not to a soul_ ,” Lucius said.

“I won’t. I swear,” she answered.

However deeply thankful Astoria was, she could not bring herself to thank him. Lucius Disapparated, back to make others’ lives miserable. The pair had gone unseen in this final corner of Hogsmeade. Even the Death Eaters who were evidently patrolling the village avoided this place, and Astoria remained well beyond their detection. With one last look over her shoulder, she knocked on the purple door. Deep inside the house, muffled bells tolled in great numbers for the purpose of alerting only one occupant.


	12. Beneath the Floorboards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Legibility [in environmental psychology] reflects the ease with which a place can be recognized, organized into a pattern and recalled -- in other words, a place that we can wander around in without getting **lost**." -[F. T. McAndrew](https://theconversation.com/evolutionary-psychology-explains-why-haunted-houses-creep-us-out-48209)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 12 - "Wrapped in Piano Strings" by Radical Face
> 
> 🧿 Best read with the lights low...

Professor Sinistra did not open the door all the way, much like Theodore when he had first seen Astoria at his doorstep. Astoria tried to present herself as normally as possible, but her body felt unrecognisable.

“Astoria, dear,” Professor Sinistra gasped, opening the door a hair more, “When is the next standard equinox and epoch going to be defined?”

Astoria wished the professor would have asked her a simpler identifying question, and raked her brain sleepily.

“Er, at the millennium…” she scraped by.

“Well, that’s out of the way. Come in before the guards take notice,” Professor Sinistra invited.

She drew Astoria into the house. The entryway was lit with only a few candles to avoid the attention of the Death Eaters who patrolled the village. It cast flickering light onto the odd paintings hung on the wall. Astoria wore no cloak, so the closet off the entry did not serve her. She watched Professor Sinistra secure the door with magical and manual locks alike.

“I’m sorry about the time, Professor. I need a place to stay. I'm really sorry.”

“Oh, of course! You don’t have to apologise. I am so glad to know you’re safe! I’ve been worried out of my mind about you, dear!”

She gave Astoria a tight hug and led her down a hall full of paintings of strangely coloured landscapes. Astoria had seen many years worth of the professor’s memories during Legilimency lessons, but it was difficult to keep a sense of direction in the house. The sitting room should have been right off the entry…

“Here we are. I apologise for the mess. Really, it’s quite a disaster zone in here,” Professor Sinistra sighed at the unrecognisable sitting room.

There were piles of household items, textbooks, mail, and newspapers on every place to sit, so the professor conjured two more chairs and kicked a pile of dishtowels out of the way. The light from Professor Sinistra’s wand was not sufficient to study the place closely. It had a disagreeably strong perfume in the air, but it was far better than the sour cigarettes and marijuana from the hotel. Astoria did not want to set her suitcase on anything of potential value and rested it on her lap.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry. You can set that right here –– yes, I’m sorry. I haven’t tidied.”

“WHAT A MESS!”

Astoria startled at the sound of a man’s voice coming from the back of the house. Professor Sinistra, too, lost her train of thought for a moment.

“Oh, that’s the bird! I’m sorry, dear. The bird can talk, mostly to make fun of people. I’m so sorry about that. It’s one of those noisy Doppelvangas, and––”

“Professor, really, don’t worry about it. It’s very late. Would you mind telling me if my family was in the news?”

“Well, You-Know-Who is controlling the media. He has been for quite some time. I found out about the attack through the Death Eaters themselves… they’re all talking about it. _Ahem_. Excuse me. It’s a terrible, terrible thing. I am very sorry. You’ve been through so much. I’m just so happy you’re alive… I’ve been going mad in here… We can talk tomorrow, if you’d like.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“There are a few things I have to tell you tonight, though. Firstly, I’ve been clearing out boggarts instead of getting to the root of the problem and cleaning the house…”

 _More boggarts_?

“Naturally,” the professor continued, “I’d prefer to deal with boggarts in the daylight hours, so please don’t open anything. I’ll be more than happy to help you settle in with your things tomorrow, and you can make yourself at home then. For reference, my boggart is a dementor. I recall you’ve seen dementor-boggarts before with Professor Lupin.”

“Yes, I have.”

“Well, just in case, what exactly is your boggart, dear?”

Astoria’s boggart wasn’t anything that could be pictured. Instead, she kept remembering Alecto’s.

“Erm, my boggart…” she tried to talk. “It’s invisible. It makes it so, er, everyone seems to lie or keep things from me. But, erm, I actually just saw… a really bad one, erm… before I came here…”

Her mouth went dry. She wondered if her boggart would change to match Alecto’s. Likely not. Astoria didn’t _fear_ Alecto’s boggart, per se. A boggart can’t survive on what Astoria felt if Astoria couldn’t even name the feeling herself. Professor Sinistra thankfully asked no questions.

“Oh, Astoria…” she sighed. “That sounds horrible. Well, if one day I act bizarrely and lie, let’s assume a boggart found you, and I can get rid of it. That brings me to the next thing I’d like to tell you. Please use this staircase as your reference point.”

She pointed to the main stair, a steep switchback with an intricate twigwork banister. Looking out of the room, Astoria noticed a line of large ornaments hanging from the arch. In the dark, it looked like eyes were painted on them.

“I’ve abused the Undetectable Extension Charm to the point of tax evasion,” Professor Sinistra admitted. “Winky sometimes gets lost trying to clean up my messes, poor thing. If you hear her calling, tell me so I can Summon her. She does better at Hogwarts, I think. When she gets lost there, there’s always a ghost or portrait or cat she can follow. Here, well, it’s just us and the bird. Oh, now I’m just blathering. I’m so glad you’re alive, dear. Let’s get you something to drink.”

Winky appeared atop a pile of newspapers that threatened to slip. Professor Sinistra tutted at herself; it seemed she had meant to make the tea without waking Winky. The damage was done, though.

“W-Winky heard someone else talking. Winky comes to Madam Aurora straight away! Winky makes good tea, Miss Greengrass, very good tea!”

Her high-pitched voice was silly and comforting, and like most everything she made, the tea was delicious. Astoria rubbed Winky’s floppy bat ears. Professor Sinistra knew how much sleep Astoria had lost since the attack and showed her up the stair soon after.

“I’m sorry; it’ll be the sixth floor. I didn’t want to put you on a floor all by yourself. I am on the sixth floor.”

“The sixth floor isn’t much compared to Astronomy Tower,” Astoria said.

Professor Sinistra hummed. Astoria had barely realised how much she had missed her in the disaster; it was so wonderful to be with her again. Though exhausted, Astoria did not object to the climb. She had been cramped in little more than a large closet space for so long, and the further they ascended, the less prominent the grandmotherly fragrance was. Each of the floor landings they passed had the same eyelike ornaments on the beams, and sconces with tiny, purple flames. On the fifth floor, Astoria was bemused by an interior window looking to another part of the house, invisible from the outside. There was some sort of artistic feature on the far wall of the hallway, but no access from the staircase.

On the sixth floor, Professor Sinistra fed the sconce flames with another dash of magic, and the hallway appeared in a soft, violet glow. There was a small sitting area, a bathroom, a presumed closet, and two bedrooms. It was uncharacteristically neat compared to the rest of what Astoria had seen. The bedroom she was shown was, in fact, as orderly as any room at Quennell Park. It had a sweet little bench in an oriel window. Tied along the curtain rod were hanging beads, charms, and bushels of dried herbs. The room was otherwise decorated with celestial globes and antique navigational equipment. Astoria set her suitcase on a round ottoman and sat herself on the comfy bed.

“I have better pillows. If those pillows are too thick, keep Summoning pillows until you get one you like!” Professor Sinistra offered. “My house is full of strong magic.”

“What if I were to steal your pillow from under your head?” Astoria said light-heartedly.

“I’ll put an Anti-Theft charm on mine,” the professor nodded.

“Thank you very much for all you’ve done, Professor Sinistra. Erm, I wanted to tell you, Alecto kidnapped me, but she sort of had a nervous breakdown. So she shouldn’t be looking for me, if that, er… makes you feel better.”

Professor Sinistra walked up to her and put both hands on her shoulders.

“Astoria, I am so sorry this happened. But I wouldn’t care if you were an international fugitive. There is no way I would turn you out there. The only reason I might not want you here is so you wouldn’t see my hoarding! Is that clear?”

Professor Sinistra really was the best –– the sort of person one could never hope to repay. She dimmed the lights, a purple twinkle coming through one of the glass eye charms.

“Professor, what are these ornaments?” Astoria simply had to ask.

“Oh, those are nazar and hamsa amulets,” she answered, enthused to talk in spite of the hour. “They offer protection against the evil eye. Or, as we say, malevolent Legilimency. Now, keep in mind, they are not replacements for Occlumency. These merely allow protection for a certain area, not a specific person. That’s why I have them everywhere. Even I cannot use Legilimency in the house.”

“Oh, wow… I didn’t know that.”

“It’s tradition. I doubt it would be taught in D.A.D.A. these days, but I’ve found it highly effective. My mother used the nazar, and my mother-in-law used the hamsa. Isn’t it nice how some ideas are universal?”

Astoria agreed. In the dim purple cast, Professor Sinistra’s eyes shone beautifully. It had been a long time since Astoria had appreciated their kindness without any pressure from either of their Legilimency. The professor retired to her room, and Astoria lay back on the bed. So much weight had vanished from her nerves and muscles, and the plush of the pillow was a luxury. Her chest ached with sheer relief. She had bittersweet thoughts of what her parents might think of the chaotic receiving area of the house and the many talismans. She hoped that her family was somewhere they liked, with pretty rooms and commodities. Their world, she hoped, was still small.

Astoria’s world was not. She had only been asleep for mere minutes –– perhaps she wasn’t asleep at all –– when her entire body jolted, and Alecto’s boggart flashed before her eyes. Before she knew it, she was sitting up in bed. She must have shouted, because Professor Sinistra was at her door in an instant.

“Astoria! Dear, are you hurt?”

Astoria wanted to say, “Nightmare,” but it hadn’t been a nightmare, had it? Her whole body tingled. Her brain invented pain that wasn’t there. Alecto’s tears, though, were still wet on the fabric against her knee. It would dry soon enough, surely. Astoria moved her robe so she wouldn’t feel it… that sensation was worse than pain, wasn’t it?

“I’m not hurt. I’m sorry, Professor. I started from my sleep. I’m… stressed.”

Professor Sinistra sat at the side of her bed.

“Understandably,” she said. “Heavens, how could you _not_ be?”

She took Astoria’s hands and rubbed them softly. She must have known that “stressed” didn’t even begin to cover it.

“Astoria, I am right across the hall. I know you are frightened. Your mind and body are both exhausted. Would you like me to get you a potion?”

Astoria knew she could not hold down anything more complex than water. Perhaps she could not hold water, either.

“No, thank you. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Enough of that,” the professor said with a swift nod, and she bid her goodnight a second time.

Astoria awoke late, not wanting to acknowledge that anything existed beyond the blankets. The Foe-Shard had rolled out of her crumpled robes overnight and sat cold against her arm. She could make out a few of the Death Eaters patrolling Hogsmeade. Astoria sat up, tilted her suitcase, and grabbed the slight supply of toiletries she had left. They were dirty after the misadventure with Alecto. It was afternoon, and Professor Sinistra must have gone downstairs hours ago.

The bathroom had two marble sink basins, one with light water stains and drops of soap, and the other sparkling clean. Astoria used the former, trying to make as little imprint as possible on Professor Sinistra’s hospitality. Back in the hall, Astoria was so impressed with the décor, orderliness, and expanse of that level of the house that she wanted to request a tour. That was probably out of the question with the current state of affairs. She minded Professor Sinistra’s advice to keep on the main staircase. Sunlight sparkled through the blue nazars and hamsas, and Astoria noticed plenty more points of interest along the way. Each curve of the handrail was carved with a floret of overlapping circles. The interior window she had seen on the fifth floor was already gone; it had been oddly replaced with a brick wall with a door simply painted on it. The third and the second levels’ flooring was transparent, and Astoria could see all the way down to the kitchen and pantry. Whether it was like that last night, she couldn’t say. She mostly thought of the food she had spied on the pantry shelves.

In daylight, Astoria could see that the entryway was not prepared as much for guests as it was for a certain somebody’s routine of coming home. A stand that was decidedly in the way kept pointed wizards’ hats in place. Tiny hooks by the door kept magical keys for jobs long terminated and locks long since changed. There was a series of bell chains by the door that had been installed for the owners of the house to find each other. The quality apparatus had been scribbled upon with the old jokes of seventeen-year-olds: “ _Aurora Step Away from the Telescope Bell_ ,” “ _Jonah Put the Book Down Bell_ ,” and of course, “ _GUEST!_ _Throw Everything in a Closet Bell_.”

“Professor Sinistra?” Astoria called.

“I’m in here.”

Down the stoop from the formal kitchen, Professor Sinistra had a large, messy still room for concocting things other than food. She stood at a long island, collecting bright red slivers into a bowl. Her eyes fell abruptly on Astoria’s feet, which still had Muggle ringworm.

“I’ve finished making an itching powder, if you want to make your feet ten times worse,” she grinned. “I was going to make rose hip jam. But I can make you an ointment for that if we let you-know-who make the jam.”

The “you-know-who” in this case, of course, was Winky, but Astoria couldn’t help herself.

“You-Know-Who’s a world-renowned baker according to _Witch Weekly_. I wonder what turned him to crimes against humanity,” Astoria clucked.

“His cupcake shop went completely bankrupt. Don’t make light of it,” Professor Sinistra joked along. “Winky dear!”

_POP!_

Winky looked shaken and could not have been happier to have something to do. She took the seeded rose hips up to the kitchen, looking both ways before she passed the threshold.

“She’s always a bit cautious whenever I rearrange the house. She gets that way when the staircases change at Hogwarts, too. I’m glad you didn’t have any trouble making your way down here. I tried to clear the floors above me so you could see downward, just in case. I missed this room, though, because I think I have another toilet above. No, maybe the lumber room…”

Professor Sinistra waved her long wand back and forth, murmuring a spell that turned the ceiling above them transparent. She raised one eyebrow at the view, which was neither a toilet or lumber room, but a closet. Beneath the dated clothing were brown boxes stuffed with what anyone would hope were woodworking tools.

“Hm. That doesn’t make sense. I thought I put that closet by the archives. Oh well. Here, I’ll teach you how to make this. I would have thought Severus had. This recipe must not have ‘ensnared’ his senses enough, I suppose. We’re going to take this –– _Accio celandine sap_ –– and mix it with these oils. I know we have them somewhere… Aha!”

It only took them twenty minutes to blend and thicken the ointment, and Astoria was as glad to stop itching as she was to stop being so ashamed of her affliction. She would have to wash the blankets she had slept in, too. Yuck.

Professor Sinistra poked her arm out the kitchen window and cast an Atmospheric Charm to get a sunny day. Astoria admired the expansive ring of clouds the professor had shooed away in one go. Astoria took the leftovers of the breakfast she had missed, noting with curiosity that her glass had eyes painted on it.

Professor Sinistra showed her to the sunroom, which had a view to the summer vegetable patch. The ceiling was strung with boughs of herbs, and assorted flower heads in glass jars of water. Woven baskets in all shades of pink were stacked high by a new, mismatched door that led easily out to the tomatoes. A large, blue and gold bird sat peacefully in its cage under the prisms of a milky stained glass window. That must have been the bird that had startled her with its loud, humanlike call.

Astoria took a seat and admired the view of the mountains whilst she ate. Professor Sinistra reclined in a black wicker chair, and rummaged underneath it for a heavy reference book. A little more rummaging gave her a handful of yellow-green rushes to weave with. She switched her gaze between the book and the design she was carefully weaving with the rushes. When Astoria came back from washing her dishes, Professor Sinistra already had three artsy crosses in her lap.

“These are Saint Brigid’s crosses. They ward off evil. Would you like to learn how to make one?”

“Sure.”

The bird ruffled its glittering feathers and oriented to the sound.

“Sure!” said the bird, imitating Astoria’s voice.

Professor Sinistra chuckled, “If he annoys you, I can move him.”

“Move him!” said the bird in Professor Sinistra’s accent.

“Er, no that’s all right,” Astoria said, and the bird playfully repeated what she said again.

She hadn’t known that the bird was using mimicry; the way Professor Sinistra had worded it before, Astoria thought the bird was totally capable of speech as say, a House-elf or some fairies were. When it turned out that it only mimicked, Astoria grew curious about the voice she had heard it use last night.

Astoria decided not to encourage the bird further and quietly watched Professor Sinistra’s method for making the crosses. She also consulted the moving drawings in the guidebook. Its title was _Advanced Apotropaic Magic_ , an antique volume on amulets, talismans, good-luck charms, and other Dark deflectors. Astoria considered what a benefit it could have been as a D.A.D.A. textbook, although it undeniably encouraged house clutter. Astoria abruptly soured as she took in the expanse of Professor Sinistra’s Extended house and the extraordinary amount of possessions in it. How long would it take Professor Sinistra to leave the house in an emergency? Would she have to take all of her things with her, like the Greengrasses had done? Half of this stuff she didn’t even use.

Wringing that ill feeling out required the manual but creative task of making ten St Brigid’s crosses. Astoria considered that most of the junk in the professor’s house was just that –– junk, which she had hoarded over the difficulty of throwing things away. There weren’t treasures with prices and things to display for guests’ eyes, but memories (and nothings) piled into clustered mountains that embarrassed her. As Astoria idly flipped through the book’s pages, she also saw that most anything that hung in the house was apotropaic in nature. The eyes painted on the goblets and cups, the bushels of herbs, the crosses, and the amulets were only surface protectors. Anything Professor Sinistra had faith in, like root poppets and bent coins, could become part of the walls themselves with a bit of oddball remodelling. That the house was strange and dusty should have been Astoria’s clue that no sense of hubris permeated the walls. She scolded herself for directing her grudge against her parents onto the professor.

Still, having to keep to only few rooms sat wrong with Astoria, though it was no doubt the leftover unease from having been trapped in the hotel. There was plenty of room to walk in spite of areas of profound hoarding. Even in her limited area, Astoria spotted a side staircase that led nowhere and a door positioned at a right angle on the upper wall and ceiling. A pile of mismatched leather shoes fell on her head when she unlatched the corner door, perhaps a hint not to snoop.

The cascade of lucky shoes alerted Professor Sinistra to Astoria’s need for clothes, since her only two garments were stained and worn from continuous washing with hotel hand soap. This was the first invitation to wander the house in search of closets, and Astoria accepted it with a palpable heartbeat. Again, she was warned of boggarts, and kept her wand handy.

She walked up to the third level to see what it would be like to step onto see-through floor. It was better than a broom, but being able to see all the way down to the kitchen beneath her led to a goofy need to touch the wall. The first closet she encountered, she opened. She knew that beggars could not be choosers, but the clothes in there screamed the seventies a tad too much. There was an old strip of parchment tacked to the inside of the door. It had Crouch Jr’s writing.

> _“If you’re looking for the broom closet, I put it on the ground floor behind the icebox room. Why did we put the brooms all the way up here in the first place? Good thing the N.E.W.T.s didn’t test our common sense! Love you. –Jonah”_

Down the hall, there was a room with drawers for walls. There was a drawer labelled “quill nibs” that instead had a tin of mints, a drawer dedicated to receipts that instead had painted pebbles, and several drawers that had nothing at all. Astoria couldn’t make out what was in one drawer until it popped out at her –– a folded ladder snaked its way right from the drawer and up to the ceiling, where a hole had been cut through the storeys. Astoria was so amused by it that she got her footing and went up the ladder. She poked her head into darkness and shimmied her arm up to cast the Lighting Charm. The room had been created with magical space; there were no windows and no spot from the outside where the room could be found. It was mostly old furniture and boxes of china. A weird trail mix of pumpkin seeds, prescription potion capsules, and dried candle wax was set in a circle across the floor, but Astoria could not find from where they had been spilt. So they must have been placed… Astoria climbed back down.

She navigated her way back to the main staircase and went up to the fourth floor proper. Just as she suspected, the room she had accessed from the ladder was nowhere to be found. She went through the double doors by the corner and found an amazing, alphabetised collection of cassettes sitting in tiny shelves built solely for that purpose. There were green beanbag chairs, shaggy rugs, and a home bar. The walls were decorated with old rock band posters that had been frayed on the edges from multiple moves. Some of them had glittering silver autographs from the band members. Rhiannon would have fallen to her knees at the sight of it.

In addition to the posters, there were personal photographs. One of them showed a trio of apparently inseparable friends, Glenda Chittock, Aurora Sinistra, and Crouch Jr. They were at a crowded concert, all sporting t-shirts from previous shows. Ms Chittock had the same hairstyle she still wore. She blew a large red bubble from her gum. Professor Sinistra popped it and made her smile for the picture, unaware that it was already being taken. Crouch Jr was laughing as they fought over what sort of mood they were trying to capture in the photograph and couldn’t hold the pose, either. It was the only planned photograph in a wall of candids. Astoria knew the happiness in these photographs had been snuffed like smoke from flame, leaving its scent hovering with every household draft.

One other photograph caught her attention before she left. In fact, it startled her. It was an image of the stage of the Wizarding Wireless Network building in Hogsmeade, which was only a few blocks down. Hestia’s mistake of a haircut could not be missed even though the photograph was taken from far away. Astoria stepped forward to see the tiny faces of her friends. It was their first concert, from the February of their fourth year. She never would have guessed Professor Sinistra had taken her time for something like that, and it touched her deeply. The professor had pretended she _hadn’t_ seen it, too, likely so Astoria wouldn’t feel embarrassed. How could she ever forget when she started singing off-cue, and when Dolores Umbridge banned all Pariah content the day after…?

In the moving photo, a pale hand suddenly obscured the view of the stage. It pointed at Rhiannon. There was a minute wiggle of the camera, and Professor Sinistra’s hand entered the scene, gently pushing the other out of the way of the lens. Given the angle of the hands, the professor was nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with her companion. Her fingers curled familiarly over the white, knobbly hand, which withdrew at total ease. Astoria studied this picture until her head and stomach hurt. That wasn’t Glenda’s hand.

Astoria found some clothes on the fifth floor that she would not have to bother Professor Sinistra to hem. It made her feel less short to _not_ need them hemmed, though the longer she explored the house alone, the tinier she felt. She did not want to go back downstairs and was sure that her generous host would not mind if she took a peek in the home observatory on the top floor. She felt happier than she had in such a long time as she thought of using telescopes with Professor Sinistra that night. But the door to the observatory was locked with a long code in Ancient Runes that Astoria didn’t dare crack without permission. When she turned to descend the turret’s staircase, she discovered that she had been trapped in.

Instead of sharing a landing with the main stairway, the spiral now descended only into an empty linen closet lying on its side. Astoria could have assumed the worst –– that she had freed every boggart during her snooping and they had now converged upon her sense of deception –– or she could have assumed that Professor Sinistra absentmindedly remodelled again. Astoria decided to go with the latter. She attempted to call for Winky, but it did not work. She was not the master of the house; she was a girl standing up to her knees in a sideways linen closet. Without any faith in the professor’s ability to hear her from so far up, Astoria decided to try the code on the door.

She had only earned an Acceptable on the Ancient Runes O.W.L., but her confidence trickled in when she was able to discern the password when given plenty of time (and without the pressure of her parents). It was a clever, vault-like spell, and she dragged her wand to the appropriate runes. They shimmered in blue, knotted into a ball, and exploded back into place once the door swung open.

The observatory was surprisingly simple, but Astoria knew the professor had Astronomy Tower at Hogwarts mostly to herself. Before taking that job, this little turret had once held the professor’s most prized technology. Her research library and office space was down a ramp below. Again, it was smaller than the library she kept at Hogwarts, but still captivating. Being trapped didn’t feel as potent in a room like this, but Astoria did prefer to make it out before Professor Sinistra would find out about her unsolicited exploring. That did not stop her from exploring the space she was already in, though. Professor Sinistra had a cushioned bulletin board, crisscrossed with ribbon to hold notes, _Polaris Magazine_ editing deadlines, and newspaper clippings. Everything there was current save for two notes in the top corner:-

> _“I moved your study to the other end of the seventh floor so I won’t be so tempted to bother you and interrupt your work. –A.”_
> 
> _“Your efforts are futile, Aurora. I moved my study into the turret so we can bother each other all the time. I also have snacks if you want. Look down! I’m right below you! –J”_

Astoria looked down as well, since she needed a way out. She didn’t see any stairwell or opening like so many areas of the house had. But there had to be something right below her still. Professor Sinistra obviously had made a hobby of moving rooms, but she wouldn’t have changed something that was part of a cherished memory. Nor would she have made her observatory inaccessible.

_Oh, it’s a hatch!_

Astoria accidentally stubbed her toes on the handle instead of pulling it, but it led her in the right direction. There was no ladder, but a small self-operated lift that was more akin to a dumbwaiter. She shimmied in.

“ _Descendo_ ,” Astoria said, and the lift took her down to Crouch Jr’s office.

The room was a fantastic example of Professor Sinistra’s commitment to preservation. Yes, the articles in the room were all from their younger days, but the perpetuation of the room really set in when Astoria saw what she would call _strategic_ dust. For dust was nonexistent except in the places dust would accumulate during Crouch’s occupancy: books on top shelves and the tops of globes used only as decoration. Professor Sinistra deliberately left the same things dusty that her husband would have left dusty. She had cleaned the rest religiously. Astoria felt just as weird to be studying the dust patterns so intently as to realise this pattern.

There was a large circular window by the stair in which a few more amulets hung, but there was otherwise no intrusion to the academic décor. Astoria stared at the couple’s wedding photograph on the wall and became unexpectedly angry. Freshly seventeen years old, and Professor Sinistra had had all of her future peace robbed from her.

 _Look at this crazy house_ , Astoria glared at the groom in the picture. _Look at this country you ruined_.

Barty Crouch Jr only looked back at her as the happiest man in the world, uncomprehending of his own selfish evil. The amazing witch at his side had been a widow for far longer than she had been a wife. It was cruel. Astoria had a pretty good idea of how to get back to the living area, but she sat on the steps to recover herself first. Legilimency was impossible in the house, but Professor Sinistra would see distress all over her face.

Escapees of Azkaban were always Kissed unless someone intervened, but the hypothetical situation of Crouch surviving stirred in Astoria because he felt so present in the house. Astoria knew it wasn’t true –– she had seen his soul get sucked out of him through Sinistra’s traumatic memories. Not to mention that she had felt his Confundus Charm leave her own body the night he had died for good. But what would have happened if Crouch Jr had not been Kissed? He would have gone back to Azkaban, but Voldemort had been breaking his followers out of that prison faster than they were coming in. Crouch Jr, an adoring and lonely minion, would have been no exception. What would Crouch do if given the chance to be truly free again? Would he give his wife half the understanding and dedication she had given him? Would he have any thought of Rhiannon, his favourite, yet _Muggle-born_ , student? Would he risk his life to defy the master he worshipped?

The loving smile in the photograph predictably said _yes_ , but his track record said otherwise. Astoria had seen Crouch Jr enough in Professor Sinistra’s memories to pity his life and his fate, but he had left stains too large to be given so much reverence in these walls. Professor Sinistra would have done better to condense the house normally, throw out the man’s socks and aftershave, and foster the friendships she did have.

Astoria found Professor Sinistra casting spells on the ceiling and floor, which had been the cause of Astoria’s adventure.

“Professor, the observatory’s been blocked off.”

“Oh, I thought I’d done something wrong with that extra closet,” she replied.

There was no good use for many of the closets in the house except to place more junk. They could just as easily have been Vanished as rearranged, but Astoria kept her opinions about the state of the house to herself. Later, the professor made a cake. It was wonderful, but Astoria recommended they eat it in one of the book-filled lounges upstairs. The heavy perfume on the main level was taking away the flavour of the cake, and quite frankly, it also sometimes stunk of very dirty laundry or something. Astoria didn’t mention that that was why she wanted to move, and the professor said nothing that indicated she had taken offense.

“So,” Professor Sinistra eased into a hard subject as they were eating dessert later, “did you know that Hogwarts attendance is compulsory for half-bloods and pure-bloods this year?”

Astoria covered her mouth with her napkin to try to hide her expression.

“Alecto said I would be going to school. I was grateful for it because I thought it’d get me out of the hotel. I didn’t know I would have to go once I was, erm, away from her.”

“I wish I could give you more options, Astoria, but trying to escape the new rules is more likely to get us killed.”

Astoria knew plenty about how escape attempts turned out, and listened helplessly to the news that all Muggle-borns had to be registered with the government and turn in their wands. She already knew they could not come to school, but perhaps that was to their benefit, as Death Eaters would be running Hogwarts. To be _wandless_ , though… To lose your job and become homeless, always wondering when the Death Eaters would come to kill you…

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Astoria asked.

“No. I don’t want you doing anything. You’ll lose your life. Leave it to the Order of the Phoenix. If they can’t do anything, neither can you. Do you understand?”

Professor Sinistra’s eyes were cold and hard, making Astoria realise once more that she might have trekked the country with an Obliviated Death Eater, but she was still fifteen. The professor had taken the stance that Astoria wasn’t going to die on her watch. It was the the right thing for an adult to do, but it wasn’t how Astoria wanted to be treated.

“Let me have your Foe-Glass piece, and I will make it into a bracelet for you. Keep it hidden in your sleeves, but don’t take it off.”

Astoria retrieved the little shard and watched Professor Sinistra’s craftwork. She was fast at weaving, and even though she had made it clear this was not to be worn ornamentally, she used shades of blue and green that Astoria liked and added in a few glass beads to make it pretty. Astoria hoped she never gave the professor the impression that she always had to have expensive jewellery on. This item was priceless.

 _Hey, Flora, Hestia?_ Astoria thought before bed as though praying to them. _We can’t do anything to help_. _Please don’t get hurt trying_. _That goes for you too, Theodore_.

Draco wouldn’t even entertain the idea of helping the right side, though, would he?

~

The following Monday, with school only a week away, Professor Sinistra had gone to the shops that were still open in Diagon Alley to get Astoria’s school supplies. Astoria and Winky were alone in the house for twenty minutes. Twenty minutes, and Professor Sinistra would be back to check on them whether she had all the school supplies or not. Astoria was capable of watching the house for twenty minutes.

Astoria opened only a sliver of the front curtains to watch the dementors that patrolled Hogsmeade’s borders for Harry Potter. However, they would take anybody they could, so she made sure Professor Sinistra left safely. She did, but Astoria lingered at the window. She pressed her hand to the glass to try to find a difference between her sadness and what lurked outside. Two dementors were floating toward each other on their patrol. Astoria knew they were eyeless, but she expected one to move out of the other’s way. On the contrary, they tried to pass through each other. They were not immaterial, and they were not spirits, so the exchange seemed to cause some distress on their black-cloaked bodies. They pulled away from one another only with tension. Black gossamer stretched thin and tore at bodily seams unknown. It looked painful enough to make Astoria feel sadistic for watching. The myriad nazar and hamsa eyes, in turn, watched her, as though she had become the evil force the house needed protection against.

It would soon rain. Astoria let go of the curtain slowly to hide the inside of the house from everything out there. In the hallway by the main stair, the lamplight came through the twigwork banisters to make spiderweb lines all over the wall. She walked over to look at the paintings in the hallway, as there was little else to do alone. The natural landscapes depicted were vibrantly coloured and vaguely distorted from the artist’s obvious intent of realism. Astoria could not tell whether the paintings were multiple attempts of the same scene or a series of slightly different paintings. But she knew whose brush had done the work and leaned against the stair to study his mind’s pictures in the dimness. Indigo skies met bloodstained autumn leaves. The stream beneath the trees ran ice-white and rough. Each tree had sigils carved into it, a pretentious message from the artist Astoria did not care to decipher. She placed her hand on one of the paintings and felt the canvas bend against the frame.

She clearly remembered the feeling of Barty Crouch’s Confundus Charm leaving her on the night he passed on. She also remembered that he had passed on so quickly due to his deep, existential unhappiness and trauma from his father. Most people were in dementors’ guts much longer than his soul had been. The thought of the creatures outside being able to attack her family drew her into perfect despair. Being separated from her family took on a whole new meaning if any dementor reached them. They had led extremely happy lives that any dementor would be happy to feed on for decades. She could not grasp the entirety of that fear. She kept thinking back to how Professor Sinistra had visited her husband’s soul by sitting next to the dementor that had taken him. What if Astoria had had to do that for her parents, her sister, her friends?

 _And how long would my own soul nourish a dementor_? she wondered.

As her life was going, probably only thirty minutes, give or take.

Astoria was sitting on the staircase, idly scratching Winky’s ears when rain began to stream against the stained glass windows. With the rain, the air in the house became stuffy. The heavy herbal scent and the funk of the dusty hoarding piles were less tolerable than usual. There was another hint Astoria could not have grown accustomed to no matter how long she stayed, though. It smelt of rubbish, spoiled food, or even a dead rat hidden amongst the professor’s junky piles. Something, somewhere in the mess reeked awfully. Astoria had known it from day one, but had said nothing for fear of embarrassing her host or distressing Winky. Astoria gently lifted Winky off her lap and walked up only one level, away from the cloud. The funk was still too pronounced there for her not to say something about it when the professor came home. It must have been coming from the basement. Perhaps moisture had got in.

“Where is Miss Astoria going?” Winky peeped. “Winky doesn’t want her getting lost when Madam Aurora is aways.”

“It was a bit dank in that room with the rain, that’s all. I wanted to sit up here if you don’t mind,” Astoria responded.

“Winky promises she does her very best to clean! Winky can’t find that bad smell, or she’d clean it up!” she yelped.

Winky scurried about the sitting area below, ever so carefully lifting up the top layers of junk piles. She opened up the drawers of the overflowing side-tables by the sofa. Nothing. She even lifted the sofa’s cushions in search of any food that could have fallen between and grown mouldy. As Winky searched, Astoria tried to evade what hung in the air. It hadn’t been this bad before. Something about the draughtiness caused by the storm must have been blowing the stench upward. But Winky, the _House-elf_ , couldn’t find the source?

“It’s not your fault, Winky. Maybe it’s between the walls. You know, she moves walls in here quite a bit. Perhaps a rat got trapped. There would be no way you could find something like that.”

“Winky never saw rats! Winky keeps all vermin out of the house very good, she does!”

Astoria did not take Winky’s word for it. After all, she had seen the little House-elf drunk and disconsolate when working at Hogwarts. She had not meant to make Winky defensive, but she guessed Winky was proud of the few things she was allowed to clean around the hoarding. Something, a small mouse even, could have crawled into any one of these piles and Winky would have missed it. Professor Sinistra, rather than actually dig through her collection, simply covered it up with perfume. Gross.

Astoria looked down toward the entrance hall, waiting for Professor Sinistra to return. It had only been five minutes since she left, but the solitude was already over Astoria’s shoulders.

Was it solitude?

No, Winky was there.

Yes, Astoria would have to complain of the smell when Professor Sinistra got home. Gently. She would pretend this was the first time she had smelled it. She practised in her head:-

_Professor, something smells, but I couldn’t figure out what it is. I think it might be in the basement. Perhaps a rat? I just noticed it when it started raining._

It wasn’t that old of a house, so the idea of a pipe bursting was a stretch. This wasn’t a Muggle place like that godforsaken hotel had been, either. Pipes didn’t just leak unless there was a severe magical failing. But with all of the professor’s “remodelling,” it wasn’t impossible. Why did she move the rooms round so much, though? It created problems like this. It had made the place a maze. As if the hoarding hadn’t done it, the ever-changing layout of the house made it difficult to find anything. Astoria glanced down at the door again, only because she was alone. Professor Sinistra was due to come home in roughly fifteen minutes. It would be fine. Astoria covered her nose and walked back downstairs to be with Winky. She tripped on Crouch’s freshly polished shoes and cussed. She couldn’t ask what good it did to keep things like this, since she herself cherished the small items her family had left behind. Yet she could have asked a lot of other things about the house.

Astoria didn’t know why she was getting so worked up about being alone here, though. Quennell Park was probably larger than all of the additions to this house combined, not to mention it was surrounded by woods instead of civilisation. Maybe it was because Quennell Park never smelled like something had died in it. It was bright and roomy, and best of all, the rooms stayed right where they had been built. At least that was how Astoria preferred to remember her home. Not the way the roots had crept through the floorboards to bring the bodies of Death Eaters to the earth below.

Unwillingly picturing what she had not quite witnessed made her shake. Everything about that night at Quennell Park had complicated her desire to survive and her wish to die. The events were awful, but the bodies gave her such a horrid imagination. Her enemies, bleeding and being pulled into the earth. Her cold, stiff relatives Transfigured into flowers. Her home had been filled with bodies, and it was all she could think of now. Every rumble of thunder was becoming a noise to beware, a Death Eater’s spell bellowing in her manor. She could no longer conceive time or how long it would be until the professor came home. But she didn’t want her to come home anymore. She wanted to see what reeked beneath her without interference. She needed to know what was being kept here.

Astoria held her nose and mouth with one hand and her wand in the other. Breaking into the sublevel of the home was frowned upon, of course, so when she dove for it, Winky panicked.

“MISS ASTORIA, WHAT IS YOU DOING?” came the shrill cry, but if Winky was going to interfere, she would also see _it_ , and she would never recover. Astoria, terrified and wand-happy, bewitched the elf asleep to save her the trauma. With a spell not quite meant for the task, Astoria began to pry up the heavy floorboards. She found only more layers of flooring, and beneath those, support beams. The smell coming up through the cracks was horrible. Astoria knew it would be, after all this time. She began to hear something like scratching, but she again told herself it was her imagination. Surely, Crouch wasn’t an Inferius. There was no way the professor would do that…

 _You’re dead_. _Be quiet_ , Astoria begged the body below as the sweat dripped down her forehead. _It’s okay_ –– _I’m only hearing things_ _because I’m afraid_.

She started to wrench the sublevel flooring up. The boards snapped louder than the thunder outside, but whatever was down there would not hurt her, no matter how awful it would look. There couldn’t have been an Inferius. Maybe Professor Sinistra had really cracked and was hiding her husband’s body from her, but he was just a body. There was no _Inferius_ , right? Astoria could just turn the body into a flower like Theodore had done for her loved ones. Then she could run away, and she would never have to talk about it again. She would never have to confront Professor Sinistra about it –– she was going to find a way to leave the country this time if it killed her.

“ _Lumos!_ ” Astoria gasped, casting far down into the pit she had created to view the basement.

The spot she had lit had something _moving_. She moved the light of her wand only to find glistening white and green masses, like eggs covered in slime. Fear overtook her heartbeat, and she clenched her chest in pain. The smell came up like an exhumed coffin and sent her backwards. But the moment she realised that Crouch’s body had never been down there was the moment she saw Professor Sinistra’s feet coming in the door. Astoria dropped on her knees and covered her face in shame.

“ _Riddikulus_!” the professor shouted.

Astoria jolted at the sound of a blast. She fell silent to the bone, unable to think properly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The interior of Professor Sinistra's house was inspired by [The Winchester Mystery House](https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/), which has its own [lore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Mystery_House#History).


	13. On Patrol

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 13 - "Halo" by Depeche Mode

Astoria lay awake in bed far past one o’clock. It had been three days since she had torn up the floor. She couldn’t believe she’d thought Professor Sinistra had made her late husband into an Inferius. She couldn’t believe she’d thought Professor Sinistra had failed to bury the body _regardless_.

How terrible she was to think that.

Only a nut would come up with that kind of accusation.

So Astoria was losing touch with herself. She had not spoken. School would start in only four days, and she would see Alecto Carrow again. Some of her friends, too, if they were alive.

In shock, Professor Sinistra had indeed asked Astoria what she was doing when she found her in the subflooring, but upon discovering Astoria speechless, she did not pressure her again. Astoria wouldn’t have expected such understanding from anyone else she knew, and the professor had not even used Legilimency on her. When Astoria had finally stabilised on that fateful day, Professor Sinistra explained what Astoria had already figured out: there was a bundimun infestation in the house’s foundation, which caused the smell. The Professor could not completely clean it herself at this stage of the colony’s development, but she was too afraid to contact pest control over embarrassment of her hoarding and fear of the government. Apparently, when Winky had started tearing through the junk to find the stench, she had released a boggart, and the boggart quickly harassed Astoria, the only human in the house at the time.

“It makes sense,” Professor Sinistra said gently. “You told me your boggart was the idea of things being hidden from you. A fear of the unknown, of deception.”

Astoria couldn’t tell if the professor guessed what she thought was under the floor. Maybe she just thought the level of the infestation had bothered Astoria on top of everything else.

As if.

 _How did I come to this_? Astoria kept thinking, but the answer was always the trauma. That was what trauma did to a person.

Astoria wished she had a normal boggart. The bundimuns were revolting and needed exterminated, but both the floor and Astoria’s self-integrity would still be intact if her boggart had been dementors or Death Eaters. She wrung her hands. She wished Alecto had a normal boggart, too, because it kept flooding her dreams. The clock mocked her with the hour, as if the vast amount of time she spent in bed included restful sleep. Professor Sinistra and Winky were downstairs cleaning out what they could of the mould-like bundimuns. Every so often, Astoria would hear the house creaking in protest, since the colony had merged and propagated so thoroughly with the foundation.

 _How did the professor come to this_?

 _Well, I know how_ , Astoria corrected herself. _I know the whole story of how_. _That’s how I came up with that awful Inferius idea_.

 _I know exactly what happened_. _So why can’t I help myself get over this? I’m not being stupid_. _I seriously can’t talk again_. _Professor Sinistra isn’t stupid, either. She’s hurting._

 _Did I hurt her more_?

Professor Sinistra came in what felt like days later to bid her goodnight. Astoria waved at her like an idiot.

 _Maybe she doesn’t know_. _I still can’t even say so much as ‘goodnight_. _’ This is just like after Maman and Father tried to talk to me about Dumbledore_. _Why won’t I just talk?_

The entire day had gone by, and Astoria had never left the bed. Now she’d be awake all night. She had been in suspended animation like this, only doing what was absolutely necessary to stay alive. Sometimes not even that. But when it was four in the morning, of course, she got up. Hunger plagued her, so she went downstairs instead of waiting for morning. The stench downstairs was less meaty than before, but she still couldn’t eat from the anxiety, and it angered her. So much food was available, unlike the chemical-water and oxtail soup she had been forced to eat with Alecto. Now, she couldn’t even appreciate the good stuff. She couldn’t appreciate being her own person again, because apparently she was the type of person to tear up floors, imagining improper burial.

Astoria knew she was not in her right mind anymore, because trying to think logically about things had put her in the same place as her boggart-fed delusions. Her shame swelled as she stepped over the wood she had damaged. Winky and the professor had put it back, but Astoria could tell it wasn’t the same. She had marked the house, her haven, with her own fear. She fought off images of the hotel lavatory again.

~

The sunroom was blanketed in a cooling gold after sunset on the first of September. Astoria ran a finger over the fray in her suitcase. Due to Hogwarts attendance being mandatory, she had become a charity case to the professor, in need of textbooks and supplies. Now she understood why Rhiannon resented being given things. She had become a vessel for pity. She had no other options.

Astoria was eager to see Flora and Theodore. If not for them, she might not be alive. She would also see Hestia, who would ask of Rhiannon. Astoria concocted the best way to reassure Hestia that Rhiannon had escaped without revealing that that reassurance had come from a Horcrux spirit.

Time passed slowly because she was so conscious of it. Her hands grew cold once she could no longer find anything suitable to fiddle with, and her thoughts tangled quietly around Draco. It seemed cruelly impossible to think of him without thinking of Death Eaters. She thought of Ivory Stretton hitting her ballroom floor dead. She thought of Ivory Stretton’s daughter, her classmate Imogen. Astoria held no guilt, but rather anxiety, over what Imogen would try to do out of revenge.

That evening, Astoria finally decided to tell Professor Sinistra the whole story of the attack at Quennell Park. She described the deaths of Uncle Faunus, Renshaw, and his family, and admitted how she blamed herself for it. Legilimency didn’t work in the walls of the house, so Astoria had to find her voice again to say it all. It was better to talk than use Legilimency anyway, Astoria felt, because she could choose exactly how to speak her pain. Professor Sinistra listened with quiet care, offering a few comments but mostly letting her get it out. Astoria appreciated the lack of a dismissive “everything’s okay” immensely. Professor Sinistra supported Astoria without any strings attached.

After pouring everything out, Astoria spent some time alone. She brewed tea and held the warm cup close to her, processing what she had been through. Once she left this house, the professor would be back in her personal thoughts from time to time, and Astoria couldn’t bear to let her know the details about her fear of an Inferius. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Even if she couldn’t Occlude anything else, she _must_ Occlude that for the woman so dear to her. Professor Sinistra was the one who had tried to help her with Occlumency in the first place. And now Astoria had to use what little ability she did have to protect her. She pushed the old thoughts down, down, down…

By the time Astoria felt comfortable Occluding the bundimun disaster, she discovered that she had one hour before she would have to return to Hogwarts Castle and face Alecto Carrow. It wasn’t going to be another year of everyone pretending things were normal if someone like her was there. Astoria wondered if there was any point to keeping her head down and focusing on her tests. What was her alternative? Pretending to be a hero that she wasn’t?

It was time don the uniform and robes Professor Sinistra had provided. They smelt just as new as the ones she had her first time going to school. The tie was just as hard to tie. Astoria tried to recognise the girl who had once begged to go to Hogwarts in the mirror. Her reflection was cruel; she decided to put on one of the professor’s old wide-brimmed hats to shy her eyes.

Astoria tried to imagine Daphne and Rhiannon adjusting to their new school in a new land, moving on from her false death. Daphne was going to enjoy N.E.W.T. Divination if her school offered it, and Rhiannon would be so good in D.A.D.A. Everyone would recover from their injuries, certainly. Time would heal her parents. They would all start over again, wherever they were. It was okay that it was without her, Astoria thought, as long as they were well.

Astoria and Professor Sinistra gathered their things in the hall, and the house shifted deep within in response to their impending departure. The Doppelvanga squeaked as Winky scurried up Professor Sinistra’s robes and onto her shoulder. With superficially innocent spells, the professor locked the house tight. The feeling of being outside of its curious walls was like a weight off Astoria’s chest. Pandora’s box, good riddance.

The night was chill but not harsh. The cloud cover was heavy, but there was no rain. Astoria walked close to the professor, often on her coattails. They were being watched, but it would be all right so long as she didn’t look back. The dementors that patrolled Hogsmeade each eve were currently stationary, their aimless hunger lurking along the path. They were under the apparent control of a Death Eater, his mask shimmering steely in the light of street lanterns. Professor Sinistra pretended to pay them no mind, though she grabbed Astoria’s wrist and hurried her along where the cobblestone from the village mismatched with the pavement along the carriage path. Soon they reached the trail to the school, which poured with anxious students who were quieter than a group of that volume should be. Astoria did not recognise anyone on her walk. Maybe she was trying not to.

First-years did not travel by boat this year. Astoria saw them pour into the carriages with the rest of the students. The line of carriages looked like a funeral procession, drawn by the Thestrals Astoria could only see in her uncle’s honour. Professor Sinistra evidently meant to walk faster than the carriages travelled, and it was increasingly difficult for Astoria to keep up with the tug on her wrist.

“Professor Snape is to be Headmaster this year. Do not be comforted by that.”

Astoria nodded stupidly, for she was walking behind her and couldn’t be seen. She tried to contextualise everything she had pulled from Draco’s thoughts. Professor Snape had made the Unbreakable Vow and killed Professor Dumbledore to save Draco. But in the end, Snape was an agent of the Dark Lord. It didn’t seem like his beliefs matched up. Of course, once one associated with Death Eaters, it was too late to have a change of heart.

“Astoria.”

“Yes, Professor?”

“Justifying others will not keep you safe. Their actions have far more consequence than their feelings,” she said briskly.

“…Yes, Professor.”

Astoria noticed how many dementors were on the premises of the school. They were keeping a great distance as students clambered through the great doors of Hogwarts, though it seemed they were waiting for something. Professor Sinistra twisted round to tell Astoria:-

“Dementors will be guarding the exits. Do not attempt to leave.”

“I would prefer if you worded it differently, Aurora. Dementors will be guarding the _entrances_ ,” crowed a familiar, nasally voice.

Professor Snape had managed to mix himself into the crowd unnoticed, though it was beyond Astoria why he wasn’t already inside in the centre of the staff table. Perhaps he was looking for Professor Sinistra. He did not so much as acknowledge Astoria’s presence, though he was sure to have heard of Quennell Park.

“There is the danger of the Order’s prodigy, whom we must keep out,” he said, flapping his white, knobbly hand across his greasy hair.

“What a nice pretence, Severus,” Professor Sinistra scoffed.

“Look further into it, Aurora. If _their_ forces enter here, so does the Dark Lord.”

The two professors must have said a few things with their eyes that Astoria missed. Then Professor Sinistra spoke aloud, “I’m well aware this is a prison.”

Professor Snape’s voice dropped very low.

“Pretend it isn’t, for me?”

Blatantly ignoring Astoria, Snape touched Professor Sinistra’s shoulder lightly and swept himself into the Great Hall. Professor Sinistra did not let go of Astoria until she got her to a seat at the very tip of Slytherin table, where she had an unobstructed view of her.

“Remember, don’t ask questions. Don’t draw attention to yourself.”

That rolled right off Professor Sinistra’s tongue, but it didn’t feel like the new normal for Astoria just yet. Winky Disapparated straight from the professor’s shoulder to start her Hogwarts duties, and Astoria took in her surroundings. She noticed how empty the Great Hall was in spite of school attendance being mandatory. Then it hit her, yet again, that they had lost all of their Muggle-born students. Their absence made the castle feel too big. Where did they escape to? How many were already in Azkaban? The more faces Astoria did not see, the angrier she became. The pain of not having Rhiannon went without saying, but there were so many familiar strangers who were simply _gone_. She did not realise what a blessing free speech was during her days with Pariah, since that was gone as well. People were being imprisoned and murdered, and all she wanted to do was scream. But she sat down. The threat of death was not so far from her, either.

She jumped when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Where’s Rhiannon gone? Is she okay?”

It was not Alecto, but Hestia, pleading in her ear. Astoria understood how long Hestia had waited without any knowledge of Rhiannon’s safety. Astoria had been through that feeling the night Draco escaped the castle.

“Rhiannon survived the attack. She escaped the country with my family,” Astoria whispered back, and she felt Hestia’s teardrops hit her ear.

“She’s okay? Thank God. I thought that––” Hestia choked.

“She is okay,” Astoria swore, touching Hestia’s hand, and they dropped the subject for their protection.

There would be so much to say later. With the question of Rhiannon’s safety out of the way, Flora chimed in.

“What’s with the hat?”

Astoria didn’t even mind the comment. She was overwhelmed with the delight of seeing them again. They were alive. They were _here_ and _alive_.

“You’ve made her cry and we’re not even twenty minutes in, Flora.”

“She usually cries about twenty minutes in, anyway.”

Flora’s snarkiness was forced. It wasn’t the time for Astoria to talk about her late uncle. It wasn’t the time to talk about what the twins’ aunt had done to her. It was time to say hello and joke with one another, and eat good food… Yet she participated quietly in stutters, her shoulders and neck recalling the hardness of the floor where Alecto had made her sleep. Flora and Hestia both sighed and glanced at their relatives with hatred. They were front and centre at the staff table. Amycus was struggling to get a fancy new cloak off of him, and Alecto watched in amusement. Then her eyes shifted. She saw that Astoria was there but had not yet made a move. She was probably trying to lull her into a false sense of security. Or keep her quiet.

 _Ah, so we’re just going to pretend it didn’t happen, Alecto_? Astoria begrudged. _You’re very good at pretending_.

“Astoria, I’m really sorry,” said Flora. “I don’t know where to start. We had no idea that she had captured you until after you got away. I’ve actually been in one big anxiety attack about what happened to you.”

Astoria swallowed some surfacing nerves and said, “It’s not your fault. Even if you had known, I wouldn’t have wanted you to do anything. In a way, it’s my own fault. I went with her so she wouldn’t… I don’t know… hurt someone.”

“Now, you know that’s not your fault!” Hestia huffed. “When we found out about it, we were horrified! I nearly fired a curse in her face, if Flora hadn’t stopped me, I’d’ve––”

“Hestia, shush,” Flora interjected.

“Well, anyway, now that I’m in ‘her’ school, I doubt she’ll keep me locked in a lavatory again,” said Astoria caustically.

Flora sighed deeply and said, “It’s unlikely. She didn’t seem like she wanted to talk much about, well, you.”

 _Tell them, Alecto_ , Astoria dared her.

The Slytherin table began to fill with people that would test far more than Astoria’s patience, but her heart sprang at the sight of Tracey and Montel Davis and Max Lazenby, who were all okay. Heather Thatcham, Alexa Crover, Horatio Pershore, and Curtis Evercreech arrived in due time, too. Astoria wasn’t close with them, but her losses had taught her to cherish even her acquaintances. She was turning to scan who was there in the other Houses when Theodore entered her line of sight. Before she reacted the way she really felt, she remembered that she was supposed to be at odds with Theodore to keep the Carrows off his case about his father. It was getting hard to remember all the acting roles she had.

Theodore wore something akin to a Prefect’s badge, yet more shiny and conspicuous.

“You’re Head Boy?” Astoria blurted.

“Great to see you’re safe, too, Astoria,” he smiled grimly. “How was your field trip with Alecto?”

“I still have all my limbs,” Astoria brushed off. “Who’s Head Girl?”

She was begging with all her heart that it wasn’t Pansy Parkinson, who had been stripped of her Prefect’s badge for attacking her the previous year. But now that violence was the norm…

“It isn’t who it _should_ be,” Theodore said bitterly, “but I understand your concern, and it isn’t Pansy, either. It’s Millicent Bulstrode.”

Astoria knew the Head Boy and Girl were supposed to be You-Know-Who’s poster children at Hogwarts. Theodore and Millicent were a strange combination for the job.

“Move over, won’t you, Theodore?”

A certain somebody with a darling, drawling accent and a regular Prefect’s badge arrived. Astoria felt his hand travel from her shoulder all the way along her back as he sank into the seat next to her. It was as good as healing magic.

“Astoria, thank God you’re alive.”

“I am. Good evening, Draco,” she said tamely, holding back everything.

“It’s not really,” he said urgently. “There’s a group of students who have been waiting to see if you’ll come back to school. They’d like to have a go at you. I heard them on the train. You still have that piece of Foe-Glass?”

“I do,” Astoria said lowly, lifting her arm to slide her sleeve to reveal the bracelet Professor Sinistra had woven.

Unsurprisingly, Imogen Stretton’s face shone clearly in the glass piece. They had always hated each other, but now that Imogen knew that her mother died at Quennell Park, there was no stopping her from making Astoria’s life terrible. She was accompanied by Diane Carter and Olivia Shardlow, who held Astoria in contempt, and Tracey Nettlebed, who could be talked into anything. Pansy Parkinson had not learnt her lesson; she was also in the Foe-Shard. It was more than the students that posed a threat to her; Alecto and Amycus were loitering in the back of the glass.

“It looks like I’ve made some enemies over the years,” Astoria sighed.

“Just keep close to me tonight, Astoria. I can’t believe what happened with Alecto,” Draco scowled, perhaps in Theodore’s direction, though Theodore didn’t notice. “Astoria, if I had had any information… any moment I could have got out of the house… I would have––”

“Draco, I know. It’s fine,” Astoria said, trying to suppress the mess of the summer.

“We do the bodyguarding round here, Malfoy,” Hestia added.

Astoria did not acknowledge Hestia, since Stretton was more serious than the twins’ usual anti-Malfoy “bodyguarding” shenanigans.

“Consider your reputation, Draco,” Astoria continued in a whisper. “You’d defend a blood-traitor against the Stretton family? I can handle these idiots alone.”

“There are loopholes to maintaining my reputation.”

“It’s that I’m pure-blood, isn’t it?”

“You have it, so you might as well use it,” Draco responded quickly.

What Astoria didn’t have was something to say in response. However, she did have the best view of the Sorting Ceremony since the time she’d been in it herself, and she wondered if the Sorting Hat would make any effort to fill the empty spaces at the other three tables. The whole House of Slytherin only suffered the absence of one student. Astoria remembered Rhiannon telling her the password to the common room was “basilisk” way back then. She remembered becoming her roommate at the last moment, and the feeling of actually making a friend outside the family. Where _did_ Rhiannon go to school now? Had her classes already started? Had she been Sorted, or were the students treated equally where she was?

Forget all that. _Was_ she okay?

It was not Professor McGonagall that brought out the Sorting Hat this year, but Amycus Carrow. He kicked the stool to the centre in front of the staff table and unceremoniously crumpled the hat onto it. Professor McGonagall wore a growling expression next to Professor Sprout’s and Professor Flitwick’s equal displeasure. Snape did not pay attention, as he was apparently in yet another mental arm-wrestle with Professor Sinistra. When the hat opened its mouth and sang a single, “ _OHHH_ ,” Amycus cast a rude hex on it.

“Skip to what’s important, why don’cha?” he boomed.

The Sorting Hat’s songs were often honest warnings, and there simply couldn’t be any of that under You-Know-Who’s control. The lack of a frightening song was probably best for the first years, Astoria had always felt, but even they had to have some clue as to what was going on in the world.

Amycus Carrow could not be trusted to pronounce the names of students, so he and his sister switched places. Now close by, Alecto took a moment to smile hideously at Astoria. Astoria gave an equally unpleasant smile back to keep the woman on her toes.

“Accrington, Maria!” Alecto shouted, and a little brunette witch ran to the stool in pure fear.

“GRYFFINDOR!” declared the hat, and Alecto sneered at the child as the Gryffindor table cheered the loudest they possibly could.

“Ash, Tymyth!”

“RAVENCLAW!” the hat said, and Alecto’s sneer toned down just slightly.

“Boland, Lúnasa!”

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Borgin, Chesna!”

There was a chorus of tittering from those not yet Sorted, and Astoria saw a lanky little girl get shoved out of the crowd.

“Go on, Chestnut! Don’t make the hat too dirty for the next person!” a cruel boy's voice called from somewhere in the throng.

As if the attention of the whole room wasn’t already on the girl, she walked up to the stool anxiously. When the hat roared “SLYTHERIN!” she did not look happy. The Slytherins somehow could not grasp why this little eleven-year-old had been so distraught in response to being Sorted there. A few brief, uncertain claps came for her. Chesna Borgin was not the most beauteous girl around. She had brutal acne, oily brown hair, big teeth, and stick arms. Alecto was closing in to push her from behind.

“Sit here, Chesna,” Astoria called gently, budging up on the bench.

Draco was slow to react, and Theodore even slower, but they managed to make space for someone so puny. Chesna leaned over her plate to look at Draco, then sort of gasped through her nose and sat straight. Astoria wondered if it had anything to do with the Malfoys being frequent shoppers at the Borgin and Burkes Dark arts shop. Her suspicion was soon confirmed when “Burke, Sedecla!” was called and followed suit into Slytherin. The girl stomped right over to Chesna and started rattling off her opinion without warning:-

“You acted like a blood-traitor in front of the whole school. We’re going to have _points_ _taken away_ before the year even starts! You knew you’d end up here! What’s all so surprising? Why are you sitting so close to _him_ , anyway? Didn’t your parents tell you not to bother the Malfoys, and the Carrows, and the Macnairs and such? _I’m_ not here to clean up after you, Chesna!”

Sedecla had long, curly dark hair and bright yellow nail polish. She was a pretty girl, but not so far off from Chesna in her social ineptitude.

“Sedecla, why don’t you take a seat over there?” Astoria encouraged as Alecto’s eyes failed to leave the first two Slytherins of the year.

“Are you a Prefect or something? No? Well, I can sit wherever I like,” Sedecla challenged, even wary to sit next to the better set of Carrow twins.

“Then you should go sit next to Pansy Parkinson down the table there. I heard she has rabies, but you’ll be okay so long as she chews with her mouth closed,” Flora said.

Sedecla decided to plop down in the space the twins had created for her, shaking her head at Chesna the whole time. The rest of the Sorting Ceremony did not seem so interesting now that these two little fools were in the midst, but Astoria was at least glad to see the that there was not an undue number of incoming Slytherins due to any attempts of trickery on the Sorting Hat. After the Sorting, Professor Snape did not call for attention, but stood at the table, domineering and important, until the Great Hall fell silent simply by being aware of him.

“At least seventy percent of you have noticed our security measures,” he began. “I will remind you that our use of dementors is not new. Those of you who are fifth-years and older may have even directly encountered the creatures. I should not have to advise you on this, but _don_ ’ _t be stupid_. The curfews have been changed for your protection. All students, first through fifth year will be required to retire to their common rooms by nine o’clock. Sixth- and seventh years’ curfew has been moved to nine-thirty. There is absolutely no ten o’clock or eleven o’clock curfew, as we are having regular patrols for your protection.”

Astoria raised her eyebrows at Snape’s deliberate vagueness. Her elbows were on the table as they had never been. So this was to be the aftermath of Dumbledore’s murder. Patrols for “protection.”

“Allow me to introduce the new members of our faculty,” Snape droned on. “Teaching the Defence Against the Dark Arts course will be Deputy Headmaster Amycus Carrow.”

Amycus scratched his hairy nose. The janitor’s cat was a better qualified professor than him.

“And Deputy Headmistress Alecto Carrow will be teaching Muggle Studies, which is now part of the core curriculum.”

He blatantly ignored the other additions to the staff –– how the Auror guards had been replaced with Death Eaters, standing at the doors without their masks. Everyone knew, anyway. Everyone _knew_.

 _You might as well say it_ , Astoria glowered at Snape.

“This year, each student will be required to wear an identification wristband, enchanted to display the wearer’s identity in spite of any Transfiguration or illicit form-change. We do not want any issues with Polyjuice Potion, needless to say, and this latest development will assure it does not happen. Wristbands will be distributed hence.”

Instead of the much-desired food, thin, silvery bracelets appeared on everyone’s right wrist without warning. Everyone’s instinct was to either grab or look at it, and murmuring began sounding throughout. Astoria studied hers carefully as if it displayed information she didn’t already know. Block letters read:-

**GREENGRASS, ASTORIA NESRINE. YEAR 6. SLYTHERIN. ROOM 106.**

She watched Draco as he tried to get the wristband off. The wristband itself was not offensive, but the fact that it was yet another mark on his body that could not be removed drove him to draw his wand to his wrist using his left hand, right in front of Snape.

Astoria quickly sneaked her hand to his and lowered the wand. It wouldn’t do any good to cast a spell against this thing. It might even burn his wrist or scar him permanently. Draco understood. He’d acted on impulse. Several students, particularly the younger ones, began to complain of not being able to take it off. Snape found himself stuck answering questions such as, “Is it waterproof?” and “Will it burn if I’m over a hot cauldron for a long time?” Astoria happened to notice Chesna Borgin studying her bracelet with confusion.

“Did they spell your name wrong, Chesna? I’m sorry. Everyone always spells your name wrong,” Sedecla Burke chimed in. “Maybe we can ask them to fix it!”

“No, but mine’s just plain grey. See? But yours is pretty and silver. And so is hers. And so are theirs. I don’t get it,” Chesna said quietly.

“You’re not the only one, though,” Sedecla responded. “See, they have some down the table. There’s a whole lot of them at the other tables. Actually, if you look, there’s not too many shiny ones at the Gryffindor table at all. So don’t freak out.”

Astoria’s eyes followed Sedecla’s description. Flora, Hestia, Draco, and Theodore all had silver bands. But Heather Thatcham had a plain band, as well as Alexa Crover, Alex Sykes, Zoe Accrington… They all happened to be half-bloods…

Astoria never pried into blood status, but it seemed like everyone with a Muggle relative had not been given a silver band. That could only mean that the half-bloods and pure-bloods had been _colour coded_ as part of their identification. Snape was halfway through explaining to a Ravenclaw that the wristbands would not constrict blood flow and once again resorted to saying, “Bear in mind that these measures have been taken for your protection.”

“Protection against what?” a brave voice finally rang out from the Gryffindor table.

Theodore started shaking his head at the foolish move. Snape was already flouncing over to the edge of their table, daring whoever it was to say more.

“We’ve already got dementors and Death Eaters in here. What’s left, exactly, for us to be protected from?”

It was Neville Longbottom, though it wasn’t really _like_ Neville Longbottom to speak up like that. Astoria tensed up over his safety. If it would have been less obvious, she would have drawn a line across her neck with her finger at him so he’d get the message.

“You might find, Mr Longbottom,” Snape cawed, “that you have great potential to be a danger to _yourself_.”

He made quite the show of walking back to his central place at the staff table, shoes clicking against the stone until once again the room fell quiet. He stood there in front of his chair to draw out the silence.

“Remember to follow the Prefects back to your common rooms and obtain the passwords after the feast,” was his final remark before the food was served.

Initially excited to have a meal, Astoria found it quite bland in comparison to Professor Sinistra’s spicy cooking, not to mention how much she missed the food at home. Maybe the Death Eaters and the atmosphere were making everything less tasty. The Carrows were crustily introducing themselves to the staff, making their authority known to all but Professor Sinistra and Madam Pomfrey, whose conversation they avoided. By the look of it, the older teachers all remembered the pair even though they were at Hogwarts for less than two academic years. Not a great sign.

Astoria’s attention faltered for but a moment, and in that moment, the Carrows had already caused a problem. They had their wands raised at Professors Flitwick, Hagrid, and Firenze, and were barking at them to move to the far edge of the table for being “half-breeds.” Several teachers immediately stood up in protest and support of their fellow staff members, but they were quickly hexed by Amycus, and Alecto threatened to do worse to the trio in question if they didn’t get their “dirt” away from her dinner.

“Oh. I get it,” Chesna Borgin started talking to herself, trying to sneak a finger behind the wristband. “My bracelet’s not silver because I’m only half-blooded.”

 _Only_ half-blooded. Astoria set her fork down.

“You know, I think yours is better than the silver anyway,” Astoria said.

“No, it isn’t. Look at it. It’s just a dull grey stripe,” Chesna complained. “So everyone’ll know I’m half-blood once they figure out what these bands really are.”

“I can make yours glows in the dark, though,” Astoria said, catching Draco’s eye.

“What? How d’you know it can do that?” the girl returned.

“Shiny things don’t glow as well with this spell,” Astoria said.

She cast the fun _Lumini_ spell that Draco had once used to make her a glow-in-the-dark pin for her bag.

“When you get to the dungeon passageways, it’ll glow,” Astoria said. “But if you want it to stop glowing, use the _Nox_ spell.”

“I just got here. I don’t know any spells,” Chesna said.

Astoria figured that pure- and half-blood children had already had some exposure to basic spells. Maybe this kid wasn’t the kind to pay attention to what adults were doing.

“Ooh, I can show you! I’ve read all the spells we’re going to learn in Charms,” Sedecla said.

“No you didn’t, you fibber,” Chesna responded.

“Well, I read the first four chapters!”

Chesna was already occupied with Astoria’s silver but non-glowing wristband, trying to read it upside-down. Her face turned pink when she knew she was caught.

“You can simply ask me my name, you know,” Astoria teased, endeared by the two girls. “It’s Astoria.”

“Well, that’s a nice name,” Chesna said. “Can’t really butcher that one. People call me Chestnut and Chest-ne, and Chesthair. And pizza-face. But that one’s, like, just in general.”

“People are stupid. You’re going to learn that before anything else here,” Hestia offered.

“She’s right, people are stupid,” Sedecla repeated. “Oh, that ghost’s head’s about to pop off…”

The girls watched the shock factor of Nearly-Headless Nick whilst Astoria continued her bland dinner. Watching the two young friends had made her miss Rhiannon even more.

“So what’s the password this year, you two?” Flora asked Draco and Theodore.

“Something racist? To indoctrinate them early?” Hestia added, bobbing her head toward the distracted first-years next to them.

“It’s just ‘Nikandros,’” Draco said.

“Who comes up with these, anyway?” Theodore pondered.

Draco only shrugged and didn’t humour the conversation. His mind was elsewhere –– the sort of place that didn’t allot Astoria any elbow room. She finished her meal quietly, and everything she had barely managed to push from her mind came back again.

She, Flora, and Hestia grouped up promptly after the feast, but there wasn’t much to say on their walk to the common room. Everything that needed said was private. Astoria wondered how late into the night they would be able to talk, and there was no deeper dread than the compulsory “Muggle Studies” class with Alecto Carrow. It would all be propaganda. It was probably held at eight in the morning, too. In the dark corridors, all of the first-years bustled and whispered excitedly. Soon they’d realise that being this far beneath most of their classes was not so great. Astoria hadn’t been a fan of Hogwarts for quite some time, but she dearly hoped that the new students wouldn’t come to believe this was how things always were, with Death Eaters round every corner.

In the scope of things, there had not been much time between Voldemort’s first attempt at power and the present régime. There were multiple generations of people that feared him, and most had barely recovered from his violence in the 1970s before reliving it all a second time. It was hard to believe this mess was all over one stupid wizard. Well, it really wasn’t. It was the age-old set of beliefs that drove him, and won him followers. Anyone with enough Dark magic and brains could have done this. Voldemort wasn’t special. Stronger than the rest of them, apparently, but nothing inherently special.

Astoria missed a step in the dark corridors of the dungeons and quickly grabbed Flora’s arm to keep from falling. She must have zoned out. Then she stumbled again.

 _Not a coincidence_.

Astoria remembered those girls who were trying to curse her, and she drew her wand. A mass of students parted to make space for the incoming flash of spells, and Astoria knew she had never really sized Imogen Stretton up for a fight. The girl was awful to start, but now she had lost her mother. Imogen pushed her way through some startled fourth-years, bringing her sidekicks with her. Astoria took note of Pansy Parkinson’s absence –– perhaps she had chickened out. Flora and Hestia had already helped to block several curses.

“You think it was me, then? That I did it whilst I was running for my damn life?” Astoria barked as Imogen’s blue eyes flashed cold in the torchlight.

Imogen was speechless with rage, her body shaking but her wand held still between Astoria’s eyes. Astoria wasn’t intimidated until she saw not one, but four, wands in her face. How could she have made a scene so early in the year when that was precisely what Professor Sinistra told her not to do?

“Put the wands _down_.”

Draco came barrelling through the students from the front of the group, knocking more than a few of them toward the wall. He stepped in front of Astoria and lifted up his left sleeve, boasting the Dark Mark in Imogen’s face like it was some sort of arrest warrant. Tracey Nettlebed was the first to withdraw her wand, gasping loudly at the sight.

“S-So what?” Imogen challenged, though all of her friends found a Dark Mark and a Prefect’s badge enough reason to listen. “Your family’s disgraced. What do you think you’re doing, anyway? She’s a disgusting blood-traitor!”

“Her treason is worth ten times your dirty blood, Stretton,” Draco spat. “She’s the last Greengrass in Britain, and you think you have business approaching her? Speaking of disgrace, you think we didn’t know about those records on your great-grandparents? You’re family’s been claiming pure-bloodedness for about forty years too long, if I recall. Even the school knows what you are.”

Imogen put her wand down to tug her sleeve further over her surprisingly dull wristband.

“If you so much as scratch her, I’ll have you all thrown in Azkaban,” Draco shouted loud enough for the whole corridor to hear. “How do you think she evaded your mother’s _unauthorised_ attacks? The magic in Astoria’s veins is older than your whole wretched family. _Learn your place_.”

Astoria didn’t like the sound of anything he said, but she couldn’t come up with a comment fast enough. Imogen blinked away angry tears, and said, “What about _you_ then?”

It was not until she said it that Astoria realised Theodore was right behind them, using his new authority unwisely. Imogen fired off accusations:-

“Y-Your –– Your dad went _missing_ after Quennell Park, Theodore! Her family did something to him! And you’re willing to defend her? Their family’s full of Squibs and blood-traitors! How could you _possibly_ –– this makes no sense! A-And _you two_! You two have _always_ been blood-traitors, running about with that awful Mudblood girl who tainted our House! How can you call yourselves loyal to the Carrow family?”

Imogen had a thousand more words on the tip of her tongue, but Theodore went toe-to-toe with her.

“I’m a logical person, Imogen. Spilling pure blood is not the answer. Anyone would expect the Greengrasses to defend themselves from an overnight slaughter. The Dark Lord would never sanction something so stupid. My father went missing at Quennell Park because he was following the wrongful orders of _your_ halfwit, half-blood mother.”

Theodore swirled away from her without another comment. Astoria felt Draco grab her arm and rush her along to the front of the line. She didn’t like this at all and sent a look to the twins, who followed her close behind. The meaning of Draco’s and Theodore’s words was sinking in rapidly.

_They have to act like I’m able to be brainwashed to their side to protect me. My history with Rhiannon won’t matter if I can pretend I’ve changed my mind, is that it? That’s no different from Alecto._

It made her so uncomfortable to be protected by Draco’s brandishing of the Dark Mark. What _was_ the real meaning of being the last Greengrass in Britain, as he had put it? What was the real meaning of not raising wands against pure-bloods? Astoria shuddered. In order to stay safe, she had to be an object. A precious jewel, an asset. Pure blood for the next generation. Something to be brainwashed and bred.

“Let go of me, Draco.”

“Oh, sorry,” Draco said. “Oh, let me see your Foe-Glass. I want to know if I got the point through.”

Astoria grimaced, but she pulled out the little piece of glass more for her eyes than his. Sure enough, Imogen and her crew no longer posed a threat to her. Parkinson and the Death Eaters roaming the school still did.

“Good. You don’t have to worry about them anymore. If you have any trouble, you come to me, and I’ll make sure––”

“Draco. Please.”

“What’s wrong? You know I had to say all that rubbish. They were going to try to––”

“Please. I can take care of myself. Acting like my guardian is only going to get you into trouble,” Astoria insisted.

“No, this isn’t like last year. The takeover’s really happened. I can do whatever I want. I can actually use this the way I want to here,” he said, lifting his arm, though it was sleeved again.

 _You’re still the one being used_ , _Draco_ , she thought, but what she said was, “You and Theodore are risking too much. My reputation’s been established.”

“Yeah, but as long as you––”

“As long as I _what_? Play along from now on?” Astoria stopped in her tracks.

Draco was already different from the broken man she had held at Theodore’s house. It was as though being back inside the walls of Hogwarts, with his badge and his academic standing, made him latch onto power he imagined he had. He was completely convinced they could be together like nothing had changed.

“Come on, Astoria, we can talk in the common room,” he said when she utterly refused to walk.

“How do you think this is going to end, Draco? You think you’re going to bring me to the family dinner? You think You-Know-Who’s going to pass me the potatoes because we’re making pure-blood babies for his big schemes?”

“ _Merlin_ , Astoria, that’s not what I––”

“It is, though! That’s your twisted plan for keeping me safe!”

Draco’s nails went through his hair in exasperation. People were glancing at them as they walked past. Flora and Hestia had given them some space, but they were sharing an unimpressed look.

“Okay. Okay, listen,” he said. “We’re going to go back to the common room and talk. And you can use Legilimency on me again, and then we’ll solve this. Because I’m not wording things right. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. It’s not like that. Okay?”

Astoria could barely unclench her jaw to speak.

“So… our whole lives, I’m just going to dip into your head so I can understand you? How about you try understanding me for a change? How about you try understanding that I held Daphne’s severed arm, and watched Sofronia go blind, and Uncle Faunus die, and–– _God, Alecto's boggart_...”

Draco was in pain just by listening to hers. He pulled her into an embrace, and Astoria hated how much she needed it. Somehow, it always felt right when they touched. They had spent so long concealing their feelings for each other to stay out of danger, but Astoria could not stomach the reason it was fine to be open about their relationship now. The Ministry had been investigating people’s blood status viciously since Dumbledore’s death. If even the likes of _Imogen Stretton_ had an amount of Muggle blood in her lineage, there could not be that many true pure-bloods left. That was the reason they could be open about their relationship. Astoria had become a commodity, perhaps a delicacy. She pulled away.

Draco stood there stupidly, waiting for her to say something. But he was right about going to the common room. Things echoed in the halls. In stone cold silence, she walked back with him. It was the first night, so it was dreadfully crowded. There were first years all over the furniture. Flora and Hestia were at odds with Draco over who got to speak to Astoria first. There was no place private, so Draco cast the _Muffliato_ spell. It was a signal that Flora and Hestia were simply going to have to wait.

“I’m sorry. I wanted to get those girls off your case once and for all. They would have made your whole year miserable. They would have physically hurt you,” Draco explained.

He was acting like she didn’t understand that part. She knew all that perfectly well.

“My question to you is, what would your plan have been if I were a half-blood?” she asked sternly. “I’m already friends with Rhiannon and a member of a family with Squibs, so what if I was _half-blooded_? What would we be doing right now, tonight?”

Draco’s eyes shifted.

“I mean, it’d be harder to keep people from harassing you and saying things. It’d be, er, more dangerous. We’d have to keep it private, like we did last year, and, er…”

The _Muffliato_ spell had worked, but Astoria kept checking to make sure no one was interested enough to read their lips. Draco was speaking nonsense anyway.

“And how long could we keep our relationship, Draco, if I were a half-blood?” she challenged, her toes curling in her shoes. “I’m a danger to you already. But a half-blood? You wouldn’t be thinking so far ahead about me if I were a half-blood, would you? You wouldn’t be so convinced that we were going to––”

 _Going to_ … It was too hard to put to words what she had seen in his innermost wishes.

Draco showed the first signs of losing his patience by scratching his cheek and waving his hands as he talked.

“Don’t we have enough to worry about _without_ you coming up with all these fake scenarios? Why do we have to talk about something that isn’t real, Astoria?”

“Because I watched my family die, Draco, and now you’re talking about me like I’m a piece of meat.”

“ _No, no_ –– Astoria, I had to put it that way! Those girls, these Death Eaters guarding the school… It’s the only language they’re going to listen to!”

“You shouldn’t be so concerned about protecting me anymore. I’ve learnt some awful things about myself out there, and I don’t need anyone’s protection. You’re going to get yourself killed over me. I can’t have that.”

“Do you really think telling me that is going to work?” Draco snorted. “There’s no way I can let something bad happen to you, now that I know that I can stop it.”

“You _can’t_ stop it,” Astoria groaned. “My Occlumency is terrible. You-Know-Who lives in your house, right?”

“We’ll just move, Astoria. We’d be allowed to move,” he said childishly.

“Moving won’t fix it! He controls every single aspect of his followers’ lives! He’ll know I resent the beliefs his world is built upon. The first wrong move you make on my behalf, he’ll kill us both.”

Draco tucked her stray hairs back under her hat and rubbed her neck.

“I fully know what I’m doing.”

There was so much love behind his words that Astoria nearly felt like dropping it. Or maybe it was that Draco was beautifully hopeless, and the depth of his feeling haunted her. She never should have let him deliver his mind to her at Theodore’s house. She never should have known how far ahead his feelings were. Draco really viewed her as “the one.” It was incredible how he thought she would be in his life regardless of the war’s outcome. It made the ugliest thoughts flood her brain, because she wanted him any way she could have him, too. Did that make her a bad person?

Draco’s whole idea of keeping her safe was to play up the fact that she was pure-blood. That is, when the time came, their children would be pure-blood and keep all the Death Eaters happy. But she would never be so blatantly stupid as to let her children be controlled by Voldemort. And first and foremost, she had to return to her family. How she would pull that stunt, she didn’t know yet. Only then could they start thinking about happily-ever-afters. Not now. She couldn’t accept this kind of protection. She had to learn how to protect herself in this environment. Arguing with Draco, though, would not accomplish anything other than making him feel worse. In fact, the false sense of protecting her might have been all he had left. He needed this. She was trying hard to come up with something to say that was neither an argument nor an acceptance of terms. It didn’t look like she would have to commit to either with the way Alexa Crover was hurrying up to her.

“Hey! Hey, sorry to interrupt, but I’m your roommate?” she said uncertainly, twisting the band on her wrist. “Erm. I kinda noticed the change last-minute.”

Draco reluctantly accepted that that was the end of the conversation for the time being, and he lifted the _Muffliato_ charm. A few third- and fourth-years jumped in fear at the sight of him raising his wand, all apparently aware of what consumed his family. Alexa looked side to side and found Flora and Hestia on a chair not fair off, making Astoria realise _they_ had been the ones trying to read her lips.

“We should get to the room anyway,” Flora declared, looking towards Parkinson, who was fidgeting by the bookshelves, her eyes locked on forbidden fruit.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” said Draco quietly. “Let me know what your schedule is.”

Astoria said, “All right.”

Walking away from him was a nasty feeling, as though she would lose him one way or another by morning. She lagged behind the twins and the blonde girl. It wasn’t Alexa’s fault, but seeing her walk into their room in place of Rhiannon made Astoria very angry. Astoria kicked off her shoes and crawled on top of her blankets. Her single suitcase was at the foot of her bed. It would take her only five minutes to unpack this year, but she still didn’t want to approach the task.

“Woah, this room is pretty small!” Alexa remarked.

Astoria remembered complaining about the room being small back when stupid things mattered to her. This was nothing compared to that Muggle hotel Alecto had her in. Hestia had room to scoot her trunk across the floor the manual way.

“We’re at school, you know,” Astoria reminded as she watched Hestia struggle. “You can use substantial magic.”

“Ah, yeah. Takes me a bit to remember when we come back,” she said. “Plus it’s legal now, huh? I’ve been doing things the manual way at home just to irritate Amycus and Alecto... Oh, Alexa, you take this bed.”

Hestia urgently motioned to what had been her bed for three years. All she wanted was to have Rhiannon’s bed, but her sudden demand made Alexa think something was wrong with the bed being given to her.

“Is this one cursed or something?”

“I mean… it’s next to me, so you be the judge,” Flora said.

Alexa cautiously unpacked her pyjamas and lay them on Hestia’s old bed. Everyone took turns getting ready to retire. Nobody talked the whole time, and Astoria felt guilty for not being more hospitable to Alexa.

“Who were your old roommates again?”

She was only trying to make conversation, but it came out as even less hospitable than the silence. Alexa swished her straight-cut fringe out of her face and took her socks off by only using her toes.

“It was me, Adelaide Murton, Tabitha Bainbridge, and Amy Frome. And we had Manami before she left. Nobody liked Amy. If anything, I’m glad I’m not with her. She chants spells before bed. I think they stuck Amy with Diane Carter to be honest, in place of Manami’s mean cousin What’s-Her-Name.”

“That’s fitting,” Astoria said.

“Yeah, it’s good that they’re all together, but keeping the bad energy in one room is a good way to cause groupthink,” Flora added, taking a long swig of one of Hestia’s homemade soporifics. “If those girls threaten you because you’re with us now, Alexa, come to me immediately.”

“Er… okay…”

Astoria tried to catch a glance with Flora. Something about the way she had said that was tempting. Had she learned more Dark magic over the summer? For defensive purposes, of course…

“I have to have it dark,” Flora said, jarring Astoria.

But Flora merely extinguished all of the candles. Alexa might not have preferred that, but she didn’t protest. Everyone wiggled in their beds and fought the blankets. It was about two minutes into no sleep.

“You said Rhiannon’s okay, right?” Hestia’s voice struck the quiet.

“Yes. She’s safe. She got away with my parents and Daphne,” Astoria reiterated.

“You _saw_ her get away all right?” Hestia pressed.

“Yes,” Astoria lied.

“Then, er, how did you get stuck here…?”

“Hestia, leave her alone. If she wants to talk about it, let her pick the time. You heard the report. Her uncle was killed, and, you know, in a normal family, that’s a bad thing,” Flora snapped, and it was the last thing spoken.

 _My uncle was killed_. _Xavier Lofthouse killed him._

Astoria tried again to latch onto the revenge of killing Lofthouse, but it eased no pain. She alternated between sweating through her sheets and shivering with cold all night, and no matter how soft and comfy the mattress was, she tossed and turned. She would be having Alecto Carrow as a teacher, and she had no idea how Flora and Hestia had made it this far with that woman in their lives. To think, she thought Umbridge had been bad…

It was three in the morning when she guessed she’d never sleep, and it was four in the morning when she decided to do something about it. Astoria swung her feet over the edge of the bed. Her slippers weren’t there, of course, nor was her robe. So she drew her uniform robe over her and put on socks. She hesitated when the door made a noise, thinking she would wake Flora, who only ever slept from the combined effects of exhaustion and potions. Thankfully, Astoria had become decent at not waking Flora over the years.

In the dim hallway, Astoria wondered why they had consolidated the rooms. Her House had lost the fewest number of students of them all. There was no reason to throw Alexa in their tiny room. Then again, with the sheer size of the castle, there was no reason why they had to have the tiny room in the first place. Maybe they were trying to totally erase the image of empty beds. They were trying to make it seem like there wasn’t anything wrong, different, or missing.

No one was in the common room, which was good, considering that Astoria had no plan for if there was. She walked over to the chess table and flipped the timers back and forth. It took her father forever to make a move in chess. He was able to anticipate several moves ahead from sheer cleverness. Games like chess weren’t going to be fun anymore with her poorly-managed Legilimency. She meandered over to the bookshelf. It was full of beaten spare textbooks and encyclopaedias with archaic and unintelligible language. People had been scribbling swear words and genitals in there for a century.

A small school of luminescent fish, magenta and yellow, caught Astoria’s eye, and she sat in the sofa opposite the large window. There was so much motion in the water, she thought it must have been storming. Ordinary rainfall never affected the turbulence of the lake this far down. Astoria relaxed her muscles and listened to the sound of the fire logs crackling. Something about not hearing Rhiannon’s snores and mumbles had kept her awake. She could hear the deep, ambient sound of the lake’s motion in her dorm, but it sometimes gave her dreams of drowning.

Footsteps were not a welcome sound, and Astoria grabbed her wand from her robe. She wondered if she would spend the rest of her life arming herself at the faintest sound. Someone was walking the halls of the boys’ dormitories. She didn’t want to get up from her spot, so she waited to see if she would have to. Thankfully, Draco had been the cause of the stir. He stood at the top of the stair, aware of her presence instantly.

“Oh. What are you doing at this hour?” she asked.

He cleared his throat, “Well, I… it’s my shift.”

“Your shift?”

She reached her arm over the back of the sofa to get a better look at him. He avoided her eyes.

“We have shifts, er, where we patrol the castle. Mine’s now until breakfast. I got the shortest shift, so it’s not so bad…”

Astoria looked back at the window. Death Eaters patrolled the castle in place of the Aurors now. Draco was a Death Eater. She felt idiotic for being so surprised.

“What exactly are you patrolling for?” she asked.

“Students. Anything amiss, really,” Draco said with a voice like he was promising to be back by dinnertime.

“And if you find students?”

“I’m more of the ‘dock points’ sort now,” he said defensively. “I’ve cast well enough of the Cruciatus Curse at home. You’re thinking all kinds of awful things about me now, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’ve been ordered to do,” Astoria uttered as he made to leave for his patrol.

She had really hurt his feelings. Then she remembered the dementors and stood up from her comfortable position.

“Wait –– the dementors –– you’ve got no Patronus, Draco!”

“Pardon? Oh, they’re being controlled, Astoria. They have an agreement with Snape. Couldn’t you tell by the way they were acting? They’re not going to bother with me,” he said surely.

“Anyone could make it look like an accident if a dementor attacked you. You have no Patronus, and you have no… whatever they’re doing with them.”

Draco probably had not been as worried before she said that, but she didn’t feel bad for bringing it up. He had to come back to reality. Just because his life had changed did not make him immune to dementors. Still, he had to leave for his shift regardless, or something almost as bad as a dementor waited for him. She watched him go with cold hands. Yet again, she was powerless. Unless…

“ _Expecto Patronum_.”

It didn’t work at all. Every truly happy memory she had was tarnished by separation. She was miserable, but she wasn’t giving up. There wasn’t a dementor in her presence, and she was tired of making excuses for herself. She took several moments to calm the tension in her body and clear the anxiety and desperation from her head. She focused on a deep feeling which her voice forbade.

“ _Expecto Patronum_.”

Thin wisps of light shimmered and amassed to take the form of a peacock, whom she had named Pavo. The Patronus stomped round and titled his head at her. She didn’t know how else to direct the spell except to speak.

“Go walk with Draco. Stay right next to him.”

As an extension of herself, the Patronus understood and passed through the stone walls of the common room. Draco would recognise the bird instantly, so he wouldn’t –– or at least _shouldn’t_ –– be startled. Astoria allowed herself to feel relieved for once, though she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep and keep the Patronus going. That was how it would have to be. It wasn’t like she would be able to get back to sleep with thoughts of being in Alecto Carrow’s class creeping in at every corner.

 _But can I do this every night_?

Astoria gripped her wand, which seemed vaguely happy to be casting something wholesome like a Patronus Charm again. Four in the morning until eight was going to be a rough schedule if she pursued it, especially nights with Astronomy. She would have to destroy her sleep schedule and dedicate this block of time to homework. There wasn’t another option; Draco had been attempting to learn the Patronus Charm for years unsuccessfully.

 _THUNK_.

Astoria jumped out of her seat and raised her wand toward the sound, but she panicked when she discovered that she couldn’t cast much whilst maintaining a remote Patronus. She was busy trying to come up with a battle plan when Alexa Crover came tumbling towards her.

“Oh! You weren’t in the room when I got up to pee, and I totally thought you died!”

Alexa was sweaty and frantic, grabbing Astoria’s arms to make sure she wasn’t an illusion. Astoria hadn’t meant to cause trouble, but she hadn’t considered her roommates’ reactions if she wasn’t there when they woke, either.

“I’m sorry, Alexa. I’ll be in here awhile. I can’t sleep, so I don’t want to fidget too much and wake Flora.”

Alexa had likely done a fantastic job of waking Flora already. Astoria would stay put until it was time to get ready for the day, though Alexa didn’t seem to like the idea of her being alone. She stood in place, swiping her straight-cut fringe to no effect, as there was nowhere else for it to lie except in the front.

“Er, not to like, be in your business, but maybe staying in the common room overnight isn’t the safest idea these days?”

“For once, I think I’ll be perfectly fine. It’s the class with Alecto I’m worried about.”

“Oh, yeah. That, er. Well, I kinda feel out of the loop. So, like, Flora and Hestia aren’t their, er, their daughters or anything, right?”

Astoria gave her a look of disdain.

“Er, no, Alexa… they’re their nieces. They just act oddly towards the girls because… the dad is somewhat… off to the side, I guess…”

This roommate thing wasn’t going to work if Alexa was already listening to Tracey Nettlebed’s and Max Manson’s rumours at the dinner table. Of course, it didn’t help that Alecto and Amycus had gambolled about the Great Hall saying “our girls” like a couple of wackadoos.

“What a strange family,” remarked Alexa.

 _Nooooo, you think_? Astoria thought sardonically.

“So the Carrows are really Death Eater teachers, right? There’s Death Eaters all over, pretty much.” Alexa said.

“Correct,” responded Astoria.

“Okay. Er.”

Astoria scooted over on the sofa, since Alexa clearly wasn’t going anywhere. She joined Astoria on the seat, accidentally knocking off a decorative pillow in the process.

“My mum said your family went missing. I’m really sorry. Like, Daphne’s not here this year, and stuff… Is she… okay? I mean, are you okay? Are you gonna be okay?”

Alexa wasn’t the smoothest consoler, but Astoria appreciated her concern nonetheless. She didn’t want to bother catching Alexa up to speed with _everything_ , but she certainly didn’t want Alexa to feel like she couldn’t talk to her.

“We were attacked by Death Eaters. Daphne lost an arm escaping,” Astoria said with effort. “My cousin Sofronia lost her vision to a curse, and Adamina’s jaw broke. My grandmother was wounded in the stomach. My uncle, my cousin, his wife, and her grandfather were all killed.”

 _I killed Xavier Lofthouse and Caleb Price_.

“Oh, Astoria,” said Alexa, for once using her inside voice, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say. That’s terrible.”

“Thank you, Alexa,” Astoria nodded. “They managed to escape. I just didn’t.”

“Where are they? Do you know?” Alexa asked a little ignorantly.

“No, I’d like to think I’d be there if I did.”

“Yeah, true, yeah. Wow. So… wow, I’m sorry. What did you do? How did you get here and everything?” Alexa asked.

 _I killed Xavier Lofthouse and Caleb Price_.

“Muggle transportation and magic,” Astoria said, eager to change the subject. “Alexa, listen. Anything Flora and Hestia say about their aunt and uncle, you need to heed. They’re wicked people. I know you feel out of the loop right now, but don’t ask too many questions about Death Eaters.”

“Right, I sort of figured that’d be best. I think we’d all better look out for each other this year, right?” Alexa said shyly.

“Absolutely we should.”

“Well, then, er… I mean, I’m just saying this because your family was attacked… but like… I’m pretty sure Draco Malfoy is a Death Eater like his dad is. And I just…”

“I know. He was forced,” Astoria responded.

“Well, like, sometimes I’ve seen you two together, and I thought, ‘oh, that’s kind of a bad idea…’” Alexa said, the quietest Astoria’s ever heard her speak.

“I appreciate it, Alexa. I’m aware.”

“Er, sorry, I do hate to be in your business, I really do. But girls have gotta have each other’s backs, I think! Like, I guess what I’m trying to say is… even if he was _forced_ to be a Death Eater, he’s still a Death Eater. So he reports to You-Know-Who. Like, when I worked at St Mungo’s over the summer, my supervisor was always there over my shoulder. Not that I _wanted_ her there, but she _was_. So if you visited me on the job, my supervisor would know that you did. Like, ‘hey, why’s your lunch break showing up five minutes extra, Alexa?’ If that makes sense. I mean, I don’t think Draco clocks in. But I mean… Er, you know what I mean.”

Astoria did not shut the girl out. Alexa had good points, and Astoria had come to deeply appreciate her in only several minutes, but good points hadn’t been working for a long time. Astoria and Draco had been through so much, and the further it pulled them apart, the closer they held each other each time they returned. Astoria took Alexa by the hand and thanked her sincerely. She appreciated anyone concerned with her safety, but it happened too often. Once and for all, Astoria knew that she had to be in charge of her own safety, but her anxiety corrupted her perception of options.


	14. The Dark Arts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 14 - "Cherry Tree" by The National

Flora made eye contact with Astoria through the bathroom mirror as they struggled for space to wash their faces.

“You haven’t slept.”

“Look who’s talking,” Astoria answered warmly.

Flora did not respond with equal warmth.

“You’re actively casting something.”

“How can you tell?”

Flora stopped looking at her through the mirror and met her face-to-face.

“I know the feeling of your magic by now.”

Flora was mildly upset that Astoria couldn’t say the same. Magic was magic to Astoria in most cases; it didn’t come with flavours and colours. The only magic she could definitively recognise was her mother’s and whatever hung heavy in the forest at Quennell Park. Those memories made her think of bigger problems than maintaining a Patronus overnight. She wanted some way to address her immediate threats like Alecto and Amycus, but she also strove to protect herself from Quennell’s curse.

“I did want to talk about your magic, actually,” Astoria said, yanking her hat down.

Flora shook her hands in the sink and pulled some of Hestia’s makeup and potions out from the vanity drawer, kindly getting them ready for her. But she was also waiting to see what else Astoria would say.

“You’ve practised the Dark arts before,” Astoria whispered.

“To protect Hestia at home, yes, but I mostly read up on them rather than practised,” Flora insisted. “Why?”

“You’ve read quite a bit, then. I was hoping you could help me learn some things.”

Astoria hadn’t spent any time thinking of better ways to word that, and she was met with the consequences. Flora did not grace her with an answer and left the bathroom with a loud scoff. Their turn to get ready was over, though, so whilst Hestia and Alexa sleepily stumbled in, Astoria struck again.

“I wouldn’t ask you without good cause, Flora.”

“There is nothing stopping you from renting Dark texts from the library anymore. You’re in N.E.W.T. D.A.D.A., so just take what you want. Don’t make me escort you through it. I don’t want that guilt,” Flora said.

Her words and tone were callous, but Astoria knew her friend was troubled inside. She tried to ease some of Flora’s anxiety.

“I’m only interested for the same reason you are. I want the added protection. I’m tired of feeling defenceless.”

Flora clicked her tongue, “The Dark arts cannot be considered protection. The magic is corrupt, and your body isn’t meant for it. The whole point of the Dark arts is to cause undue harm, and these spells can backfire on you. This breed of magic doesn’t tolerate weak wills. It will not listen to hesitation.”

“I’m no longer weak,” Astoria said, “and I’ve always had to mean what I cast.”

Flora’s eyes lowered.

“Oh, yeah. Your angry cherry. Maybe you’ll have a _penchant_ for Dark magic.”

“I’m not looking for bragging rights, Flora,” Astoria remained firm. “I’m honestly terrified of your aunt after being trapped with her. We’re going to be walking past Death Eaters every day. I’m simply asking you where and how I should start. I don’t want to do anything foolish.”

Flora didn’t want to look at Astoria anymore and busied herself with lacing and re-lacing her frayed black boots. She sighed.

“I would start by making a grimoire of the spells that seem to strike a chord with you. Don’t put anything blatantly dangerous in there. You’ll know what fits your style. Don’t go looking for what’s ‘cool.’ Do _not_ practise from the original texts. It won’t be good for you. Make them your own, in the comfort of your own grimoire.”

“You’re going too fast,” Astoria admitted. “Why can’t I cast spells based on what I’ve read?”

“Dark magic doesn’t work like natural magic. I’m not gonna say it again. The way you learn it is contaminated with the intent of the one you learned it from. For example, think of when you learnt how to unlock a door. Your teacher’s intent wouldn’t influence the exact force that you unlocked the door with. Nothing about the way McGonagall turns a book into a fish tank affects the kind of fish that end up in _our_ tanks when we cast the spell. Am I making sense? Dark magic is a _cumulative_ force. Even if I were to pick up on a Dark spell from someone I hate, their intentions and their use of it comes through me. Then it’s my responsibility to control that force and tame the magic. It’s a physical, mental, and moral workout to undo social learning. It’s even worse to harness things from old books, since we don’t know the authors, and we can’t guarantee they’re honest about the girth of the spells.”

Astoria was awestruck. Flora’s advanced knowledge made her wish she, too, had the attention span to make it through books on magical theory.

“All right, I think I understand. The point of the grimoire is to collect notes about what your own interpretations are, right? To offset others’ direct impact on your casting?”

“…Absolutely,” Flora said.

Astoria was affronted at how surprised Flora was that she had understood the point. Flora must have assumed her lengthy speech would be enough to deter Astoria.

“So then how do I make a grimoire?” Astoria pestered whilst she still had Flora impressed.

It wasn’t that Astoria didn’t know the word, but she doubted she could simply tear off some scratch paper and get to work. Flora attempted to lace her shoes a third time, frustrated as her long, straight hair cascaded over her shoulders and got in her way.

“The best method for someone starting out would be to vandalise another book. The act of defacing something you care about…”

Flora clawed out her laces.

“…imbues your magical energy into it. Until it’s concentrated, contained in the purest form.”

It was all esoteric to Astoria. She waited for more.

“Pick a book that means something to you and write in it. Glue pages on top of what’s there. Scribble in the margins. Use blank space. Bleed the original ink out. A blank book is too troublesome to build into something substantial. The best grimoire would be something like a diary.”

“A diary,” Astoria said. “I’ve never kept a diary.”

“Remember that scrapbook thing Rhiannon used to have? With all her confessions and song drafts in it? That would make an excellent grimoire. Her notebook, too. I almost wish Hestia had it. She could become the next Dark Lord with that.”

“I don’t have anything like Rhiannon did, either. Father took all our possessions out before he let us leave the country, and I wouldn’t have anything on me _now_ anyway. Did you make one yourself? What did you use?”

Flora suddenly choked up in a rare display of emotional vulnerability.

“A baby album. Mother bought it. The… the pages are to hold photographs, so it wasn’t always easy to write… But there weren’t, you know, any photographs, so…”

Astoria had triggered something profoundly sore and sat next to Flora on the bed.

“She wrote a note in the front of the book before she even knew she was having… more than one baby. I can see where she… I can see where she Vanished the old phrasing and wrote in… how she loved us. Well, she never did end up knowing us, but…”

Flora scooted away and put her face in her sleeve, not wanting any comforting touch from Astoria. Yet she did want the company, so Astoria stayed. A baby album for a grimoire, though… it was almost as unpleasant to hear as it must have been to reveal.

“It must work because your mother wanted to protect you,” Astoria offered. “I can tell you’re upset with yourself for making it a grimoire. Even though she wasn’t teaching you magic, your mother’s intent would be to protect you, so that’s how you can harness some darker magic to protect Hestia. You said this magic was cumulative with intent.”

Flora’s eyes swelled, the feeling of tears foreign on her pale lashes.

“Yes, that’s what I’ve always thought. That’s how I looked at it. I try to use it to keep my sister safe from those two. I don’t do anything bad with it. I couldn’t.”

“I’m sure that’s what your mother would want, really,” said Astoria, thinking of how her own mother had used Dark magic to take down three Death Eaters.

Unlike Flora, Astoria was the kind of girl who cried when she saw other people cry. However, Flora wouldn’t take kindly to her big, big tears, since she was already pulling it back together. So Astoria stifled it. They waited for the other girls quietly and then left for breakfast, with Flora placing a spell on their door. When they entered the slow stream of students leaving the common room, Astoria saw Montel and Tracey hoping to catch her attention. She didn’t want to tell the story of Quennell Park again.

“Good morning,” she said to them. “I’m glad to see you’re both safe.”

Tracey sighed and gave her a hug. She had the kind of strength and skill Astoria wanted, pure and normal. There wasn’t a thought in Tracey’s mind that Dark magic would be the best option to protect her brother. So why did Astoria keep looking at it that way? Their differing experiences? Montel gave Astoria a sad look and said, “We heard about your family. I wanted to meet up and talk last night, but I didn’t know what to say. If you ever need anything, we’re here for you.”

“Thank you, Montel,” Astoria said. “That means a lot to me. Erm, I don’t know if you both know this, but Professor Sinistra said it’s at the point we should just lie low.”

“Oh, yeah, definitely. This place is crawling with Death Eaters. It feels wrong not to speak up, though,” Montel said emphatically. “I can’t wrap my head round it, how bad it’s been.”

Astoria nodded because there weren’t many words left. At least it felt good to have a sizeable group of people near her on the walk to breakfast. Breakfast had a bit more buzz than the feast the night previous, but the Great Hall still lacked the usual laughter and excitement. Astoria in particular was overwrought with Alecto Carrow’s presence in a setting that was supposed to be safe. She followed the twins to a seat and waited for her food and schedule. She wondered when she could finally release her Patronus, because it felt like it was getting closer to her wand. She wondered if she would still be able to cast a Patronus for Draco if she let her wand make more Dark magic.

Draco walked in with a roll of parchment and the glowing form of Pavo at his side. It caught many Gryffindors’ attention, since they must have known that he couldn’t cast one. Ginny Weasley and Neville Longbottom looked confused. Astoria tried to let the spell go quietly, but the moment she moved her wand, the Patronus strutted proudly back to her before vanishing.

“You’ve made a scene,” Flora criticised, but having felt her Patronus made Astoria not care as much.

Draco briefly reported to Snape and then walked right up to her. He was in a great mood, having been next to a Patronus overnight. He shimmied into Flora’s personal space to touch Astoria’s shoulder.

“That Patronus was a nice surprise, Astoria,” he said smoothly. “But you must have been awake all night. You didn’t have to do that. I was fine.”

“I believe I did. You might only have been fine because of the spell.”

“Well, you can’t do it every night,” he said, still blatantly showing affection in spite of how many eyes were on them.

He was waiting for either Flora or Montel to move a seat down, which neither of them did. Astoria wished one of them would so that he wouldn’t be standing behind her and rubbing her shoulders. Astoria was supposed to be something Draco was ashamed of, not something to show off. She couldn’t play the role of blood purist to maintain this. She couldn’t stand the stare Parkinson was giving her.

“Flora, if you’d be so kind,” Draco stressed, and Flora budged up stiffly to avoid a bigger scene.

Astoria couldn’t help but feel happy to sit next to him, and she wished it wasn’t such a mental circus to display her affection publicly. It had been far too long since she had seen him so carefree, and she dreaded the moment it would wear off. She’d maintain a Patronus twenty-four seven if she could, just to protect him from pain.

“Our schedules should come out soon,” he said. “I won’t have too many classes.”

He had the same classes last year, but trying to kill Headmaster Dumbledore had taken up most of his time. Astoria faked a smile. It looked fake, too, which is why he asked her what was wrong. They shared a look.

“Stupid question, huh?” Draco recognised.

The schedules appeared in front of them well before their food did, likely so nobody would throw up at the sight of the Carrows’ classes mid-meal. It was a Tuesday, and Astoria only had one class, Charms. She held her schedule in line with Draco’s so they could compare. Draco had Potions right after breakfast, followed by Transfiguration just before her Charms class. He was free whilst she was still in Charms and then had no other classes.

“Want to hang out after lunch?”

 _Of course I do_. _I’ve missed you so badly_.

“That’s fine,” she said.

Wednesdays would be busy for them. Astoria had both of the Carrows’ classes plus double Arithmancy. Draco had to endure both Carrows as well, and he had Transfiguration and double Potions.

“We’ll do evenings then,” Draco said.

“You really want to see me that much?” she joked.

Then she remembered he wanted to be with her forever deep down. She had yet to sort through her feelings about that, considering the war. But his feelings didn’t bother her today, now that she had made up her mind to be her own source of protection. On Thursdays, they could meet before, during, and after lunch if they so desired, and on Fridays Draco had no classes. Astoria grimaced that it was another day she had both Carrows. On Mondays, she had Amycus’s class but not Alecto’s, then Arithmancy, Transfiguration, and Astronomy at 10:30. Draco had Alecto’s class during her only free period, so they would only see each other in Astronomy. They sat there discussing schedules until their food appeared.

Astoria realised she hadn’t bothered to ask the twins about their schedules. She felt rude, but there was comfort in knowing they had plenty of classes together. Hestia was the only one in Care of Magical Creatures, but she had dropped Transfiguration as quickly as Astoria had quit Herbology. Hestia looked into her own piece of Rhiannon’s Foe-Shard, held in a custom frame. When she and Astoria compared images, they looked similar. Amycus and Alecto were in the front, since they were close by, and other patrolling Death Eaters they didn’t know stood behind them.

“I wonder how Amycus is going to mark papers when he can’t do any maths,” Hestia grunted.

“He’ll do it how he feels,” Flora answered. “It won’t matter by the time we leave school.”

Astoria sensed the hidden meaning in Flora’s sentence –– both twins would be forced to take the Dark Mark. Hestia would likely get herself killed before she even started, refusing the Dark Mark at the cost of her life. Astoria once again fantasised removing Dark Marks from her friends’ arms and escaping the country with them. She certainly had big plans for someone so shrimpy.

“Would you come to the Astronomy library with me after lunch today?” Astoria asked Draco.

“That works.”

She didn’t know why she’d asked him so quietly; she would have to tell her roommates where she was going anyway. They couldn’t afford to keep secrets from each other this year. As Alexa Crover had said, they had to have each others’ backs.

Astoria snooped round the restricted section of the library during her free period whilst the twins got dirty in Herbology. She timidly took out several titles: _Dark Methodology_ , _User-Safe Curses_ , _Development in Darkwork, 1800-1899_ , and _Blood Magick_. The last book weighed much more than it appeared to. She had no intention of using it but felt entitled to read it after discovering Quennell’s disastrous curse.

When she met up with the twins, she hid her books and listened to their stories about Slughorn. He had not taken the chance to brew dangerous potions and leave them out on the desk this year. Rather, he had a foul-smelling one brewing, and by the time roughly forty students made their own, the whole area of the dungeons stunk.

“It was an advanced Energy Potion,” Hestia huffed. “Quidditch players use it religiously, but it can make your heart race.”

“Why did it smell so awful?” Astoria asked her, since any talk of foul smells made her think of bundimuns.

“Essence of jock,” Hestia quipped.

Despite Astoria’s best efforts to conceal her new readings, she had left the spines of the books foolishly visible in her satchel. It took Hestia only a split second to see, judge, and comment on the books.

“Astoria! You can’t be reading things like that!” she exclaimed, but when she tried to get Flora to join in, Flora dropped everything out of her own bag on purpose. Hestia had to continue to berate Astoria alone.

“One day, you’re gonna need to conjure some water, and all sorts of skeletons are gonna crash down from the ceiling and eat you!”

“Oh, Hestia, hardly…”

“Or you’ll need to unlock a door and find yourself pulled straight into the netherworld without even seeing the welcome sign!”

“Hestia! Really,” Astoria said. “I’m reading responsibly. I merely want to know what we’re up against.”

“Yeah, well don’t end up like them,” responded Hestia in exasperation.

Sixth-year N.E.W.T. Charms was extremely crowded, having just short of sixty students. To get into the class, one only needed an Acceptable O.W.L., and most people valued the lessons in Charms over any other class. Like the other N.E.W.T. classes, all four Houses were scheduled together, and Astoria took great care to keep a low profile.

Professor Flitwick explained that they would begin with various types of defensive spells and protective magic. He never once used verbiage like “on account of the situation” or “in these trying times,” but everyone in the class knew exactly why he was doing this. Astoria, as always, tried her best. Owing to practising D.A.D.A. with her friends in her fourth year, it wasn’t difficult anymore, and she didn’t have to embarrass herself in his class. However, she noticed that people were often glancing at her and talking amongst themselves.

 _That’s right_ , she thought. _My family must have made the news_.

Astoria had stayed away from the newspapers as though they were as bad as Death Eaters themselves. She assumed the media had not specified that Death Eaters attacked the Greengrasses. In fact, it was probably portrayed as a _disappearance_ rather than an evacuation. That made Astoria’s presence even more confusing for students who hardly knew her. It would spawn gossip, the last thing her injured heart needed. Astoria was fed up and decided to stare back at every person who thought it was their business to gawk at her. Her eyes were always stronger than their curiosity, but people continued to whisper about her. Since class was in session and there was nothing she could do, she tried to think positively to herself. She would need to anyway; they were instructed to try Patronus Charms during the second half of class.

 _People will eventually realise I’m not the cause of my family going missing_.

 _I’ll have no trouble with this charm_. _I’m getting pretty good_!

Pavo strutted round her desk so that anyone who hadn’t seen him already got a perfect look at his feathers. In the next seat over, Hestia sighed about Rhiannon, whose absence impeded her ability to produce anything corporeal. Flora, at first, seemed to be having more luck. She must have picked a strong, happy memory, for her Runespoor Patronus started to take shape.

 _This is much safer and more practical than Dark magic_ , Astoria thought.

She looked over fondly at Flora, but Flora’s colour was washing from her cheeks. In fact, Astoria had never seen somebody so displeased in the presence of a Patronus, much less their own.

“There’s supposed to be three,” Flora muttered, staring at her serpentine ally.

Only then did Astoria notice that Flora’s Patronus came into form with two heads, when Runespoors were born with three.

“It’s still a corporeal Patronus,” Hestia chimed in optimistically. “You did a good job.”

“There’s supposed to be three,” Flora ignored her. “There’s supposed to be three.”

Astoria didn’t see the problem with varying Patronus forms. Pavo happened to have all of his flawless plumage, but as long as he would chase off dementors, she was content with any state of his appearance.

 _I should really stick with natural magic_.

 _Who am I kidding –– that won’t stop someone like Xavier Lofthouse_.

 _I killed Xavier Lofthouse and Caleb Price_.

When Astoria grabbed her things at the end of class, the book on blood magic felt heavier still, and she had to squat to pick it up. Flora, who always noticed everything, saw her and remarked, “You should return that one.”

“Why?” Astoria argued. “They’ll use this sort of magic against us.”

Little did Flora know, Quennell’s Horcrux had been using blood magic against Astoria’s family for centuries upon centuries. Astoria had every right to learn about it before Death Eaters would come for her, too.

“Your ‘fight fire with fire’ attitude concerns me if you went straight for _that_ ,” muttered Flora. “Who knows what you’ll pick up from a book like that. How about you pay attention in Charms and learn some normal spells first? Professor Flitwick is sure to teach us things we can use to protect ourselves. He knows that D.A.D.A. is a sham now.”

The fact that Flora had told her all about grimoires before breakfast and encouraged a defensive use of Dark magic made it more worrying that blood magic was off the table. But it got the job done, hadn’t it? Quennell Park was nowhere to be found.

Astoria wanted to get away from the outpour of the giant class and find Draco. Maybe he would understand. She was distracted, though, by students who increasingly felt there was no need to keep their voices low.

“Remember when Dumbledore got killed? Astoria’s the one who was talking to Theodore Nott when he trapped us in the common room. It was like she knew about it,” said Tracey Nettlebed.

“Oh, I remember. And she cast those nasty spells on people in her way,” said Kieran Harper.

“You both saw that for real?” asked a Gryffindor girl in a rare inter-House conversation. “I was wondering about her. She’s always sat next to the Carrow twins when we had Potions. She had to have known about that family.”

A Gryffindor boy added, “Wait till I tell my parents she’s the only one not missing. They’ve been keeping up on the Greengrass case with every newspaper.”

Astoria lost it. These four weren’t the only ones talking about her by any means, but they were the ones saying the worst things. Perhaps it was counterintuitive, but she shoved a few people out of the way to confront the group.

“How dare you speak of my family that way,” she heaved. “You –– you fragile-witted, shallow, _mindless_ little tools!”

People cleared the circle all too willingly. Tracey Nettlebed, already spooked from Draco’s comments, hid behind the Gryffindors. The Gryffindors and Kieran Harper drew their wands.

“GET YOUR EFFING TWIGS OUT OF MY FACE!” Astoria spit.

It was like she didn’t even need to draw her wand with as angry as she was. She was nearly blacking out from her thoughts. Everything from that night at Quennell Park came back to her yet again.

“My family was attacked by Death Eaters because we actually cared about what the world’s come to! Unlike you burbling thumb-twiddlers, we made a point about human rights! Ivory Stretton ordered my cousin’s family killed, and I had to watch my uncle _die_ because Xavier Lofthouse took the opportunity to murder him as he was _grieving over his son_! DO YOU KNOW WHAT I _DID_ TO XAVIER LOFTHOUSE‽ I’D SOONER _DIE_ FOR MY FAMILY THAN ANY OF YOU WOULD RAISE A _FINGER_ FOR YOURS!”

“Astoria! Astoria, hey, that’s enough!”

“You all want to know the reason I’m here‽ My family thinks I’m DEAD! They think I died when the house exploded! NOW I’M STUCK HERE WITH YOU ARSEHOLES––”

“Astoria! ASTORIA! Stop it! Okay, you’ve made your point! Calm down!”

“–– SAYING THINGS ABOUT ME –– ABOUT MY FRIENDS ––”

“ASTORIA, ALL RIGHT!”

The persistent voice belonged to the hands that now wrestled with her as she continued to scream in the face of wand-points.

“YOU THINK I WAS INVOLVED IN DUMBLEDORE’S MURDER‽ I’LL TELL YOU WHO KILLED DUMBLEDORE! IT W––”

Whoever was holding her let her go and slapped her hard across the mouth. It was probably Hestia or Flora. No, it hadn’t sounded like them. Astoria instinctively turned to the direction of the pain, her arms ready to grip and claw and fight…

It wasn’t anyone she expected. It was Ginevra Weasley. Ginny’s jaw was set and her expression displeased. She was physically stronger than Astoria, so Astoria’s wrestling amounted to nothing without her wand. She couldn’t believe the amount of sweat pouring off of her or the unreality of her surroundings. The people she was yelling at had disappeared into the crowd already. Never before had she lost it like this.

“Were those your friends or something?” Astoria growled, wiping her mouth with her sleeve.

“No,” said Ginny.

Astoria stumbled backwards out of Ginny’s hold. Her ears were pulsing with her heartbeat, making her head feel heavy.

“You don’t need to keep standing there waiting for me to say something. I’m not sorry,” Astoria heaved.

“What do I care if you’re sorry or not? You didn’t say anything wrong, exactly.”

Astoria had to hand it to Ginny for patiently listening. She was so unlike the Gryffindors who liked to stir the cauldron. Still, Ginny remained standing there, adamant about something or other. The extended lull in any action sent most of the audience on their way. Astoria’s friend group was still there, apparently content to let Ginny deal with this.

 _There is no fight_ , Astoria convinced herself, though she was itching for one.

“Where did you learn something like that?” Ginny asked tensely. “You can’t go round announcing things about Dumbledore to people. The Ministry’s deliberately trying to put the blame on Harry. That means they’ll come after the people who say differently.”

“Wait, aren’t you nice and personal with Harry?” Astoria confronted. “Why would you want me to agree with the Ministry?”

“Not _agree_ with it, Astoria! I don’t think you need to be bragging about attacking Death Eaters when their families are in the school, and Snape is Headmaster. I’m all for resistance, don’t get me wrong, but please do it the right way. Other people aren’t going to understand. You’ll only cause more rumours.”

“I’ve already got plenty of advice about how I’m supposed to be protecting myself, thanks,” Astoria explained, since they were not fighting.

“Well, you don’t do a very good job of protecting yourself by snogging Draco Malfoy,” Ginny sneered. “You can’t get all offended by people thinking things about your family when someone like him hangs all over you.”

“I have every right to be upset,” Astoria responded.

Ginny’s lips parted to retort, but she stopped herself and reworded whatever had first come to her.

“This shiny pure-blood bracelet we have? It’s the only thing saving you and me right now.”

“I’ve been made aware of that, too, Ginny.”

“Well, I don’t want the Death Eaters to think you have information,” Ginny said. “They’ll send it _up_. Understand?”

Astoria hated this. Ginny had a point. Astoria had lost her temper, by chance, in an area where there were no Death Eaters patrolling. Of course, everything that had happened was going to make its way round the school through word of mouth. Maybe it was a good thing Astoria hadn’t blurted about Snape’s crime. And what good would that have done anyway? She knew Snape only did it because he’d made an Unbreakable Vow to protect Draco. There was no way to explain that to the hapless student body. Well, Astoria would sooner admit that she and Ginny were _both_ right than admit to being wrong. She did not say anything else to Ginny before taking the turn for a different set of stairs. Flora and Hestia’s questions came right on cue. _What the heck just happened, what were you thinking, where are you going, how long will you be, where are we meeting_. Yes, they were looking out for her, but it was like she had no will of her own. Even though Hogwarts was overrun by Death Eaters, Alecto Carrow couldn’t trap her in a classroom forever and keep her alive on oxtail soup. Astoria stormed up the stairs to Astronomy Tower. It belonged to her.

Draco was already sitting in the Astronomy library when she arrived, and he was already watching for her when she walked in. Her stomping must have been loud. She settled herself down, eyeing the warmth of Draco’s long cloak and the shape of his hands.

 _Later_.

“Draco, I’m an idiot.”

He rolled his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“People in Charms were accusing me of… of basically selling out my family, and I just went mad. I almost gave too much away about Snape and Dumbledore… And Lofthouse and Stretton and all that… I don’t know what came over me.”

Draco’s displeasure could not be camouflaged. He rubbed his temples and sighed.

“To be fair, the public had ideas about Snape before the cover-up started,” Draco said slowly.

“Oh. Well, I didn’t say his name.”

“Oh. Then why are you so upset? You made me all worried, Astoria.”

“Well, Ginny Weasley made it sound like I was going to Azkaban tomorrow for yelling at people about what happened to my family. I don’t know. I think I said that I messed up Lofthouse, but I didn’t say, you know, what actually happened.”

Draco pursed his lips toward the side. Astoria wasn’t certain why he had such a silly expression during this kind of conversation.

“You’re not going to want to hear this.”

Astoria breathed, “What is it?”

“Well, you were really upset last night about it, so…”

“Draco, just spit it out!”

“All right, who cares about Xavier Lofthouse dying besides Xander? Xander’s not in the school; the Dark Lord sent him out with the Snatchers as part of the family’s punishment. We’ve already established that we’re all supposed to be furious at Stretton’s group. And yes, I mean _that_ ‘we.’”

“Well... I don’t know. Ginny said something about being interrogated for more information. I thought back to how you have to do the interrogations for You-Know-Who, and––”

“Astoria, stop. You’re not making sense anymore. The Quennell Park case is closed on our end. There’s no need for an interrogation.”

“Well, I don’t know how it all works, Draco!” she said frantically. “All those times in your memories when you had to use that awful Cruciatus Curse…”

“I was ordered to do that for people who either failed their operatives or otherwise miffed the Dark Lord,” he said solemnly. “He’s a bit _busy_ , you know.”

“And? Isn’t this _miff_ -worthy?”

“Well, you’re not going to want to hear this, either.”

“Damn it, Draco, just tell me, okay?”

“A fifteen-year-old pureblood defeating a middle-aged bloke whose bloodline he can’t trace as far back is unlikely to draw attention at a time like this. Plus, he’s already used Stretton’s group as an example of what happens when his orders are not followed. Yes, a blood-traitor’s as bad as a Muggle-born according to them –– I’ve been trying to tell you that from day one –– but there’s simply not enough pure blood left to kill all the young blood-traitors.”

Astoria had once again been likened to an endangered species on a pedigree. She exhaled a hiss.

“You used to act like I was public enemy number-two because of Rhiannon.”

“Rhiannon’s not here for you to stand up for anymore. The quieter you are, the safer,” Draco responded.

Even though their discussion the previous night had not amounted to a solution, she knew that it wasn’t Draco who looked at her as an object. He was just telling it like it was. She took a seat across from him. It took time to shake off the event, and even more time to balance the fact that she, Ginny, and Draco were _all_ correct in some way. Draco busied himself with his Transfiguration textbook. He still had not removed his cloak. She calmed down just by watching him.

“You’re still cold after the hike up here?” she said.

“No, I just look good in this,” he hummed. “So, what’s on the agenda now?”

It was hard to focus on the other conversation she had planned when the afternoon sun dressed his face like that. The fact that there was no one around threw her breathing and tainted her thoughts. Draco was oblivious to her inner turmoil, though. Maybe he should stay that way. Astoria hoisted her bag onto the desk and took out the books.

“What are those?” he asked.

“Texts on Dark magic.”

“For…?”

“For me.”

Draco drummed his fingers on the tabletop. His brow was furrowed, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to stop her. It wasn’t that he completely understood her feelings about using it to protect people, though. It was more that he really wanted to see her do it. His pale eyes switched between her face and the books with a sharp interest that he knew better than to declare outright.

“So… you need my help or something?” Draco said, gently clearing his throat.

Astoria wasn’t sure if she needed his help or simply his moral support. She didn’t want to be alone for her first dive into the Arts, and she preferred to have him there over anyone else in the world.

“I’m going to make a grimoire. Flora said that was the easiest way for starters.”

Draco rubbed his face.

“For _starters_? I consider that intermediate, Astoria. Shouldn’t you start with casting some curses safely before you try making one of those?”

Astoria stared at him blankly. He meant everything to her, but she still trusted Flora’s judgment better. After all, Flora was the one who directly dealt with Alecto and Amycus. Draco mostly had used hexes and curses to cause trouble at school. Either way, getting started was difficult. Astoria had picked the Astronomy library since she assumed desecrating a book here would have the most meaning for her. Professor Sinistra had told her and Rhiannon to stop duelling there two years ago, but times had changed.

“Flora said the book I use should have special meaning for me, like a diary.”

Draco groaned.

“I think she’s way too far in it for your purposes,” he said firmly. “You’re only doing this to protect yourself, right? Why do you have a book like _Blood Magick_ then? That thing looks hideous. You could defeat the whole point of this and hurt yourself.”

“I brought you here because I thought you wouldn’t judge me, Draco,” Astoria said with a sarcastic smile. “I would like you to pick out the book for my grimoire. My only request is that it’s something Professor Sinistra won’t notice is missing.”

Draco suddenly didn’t seem so opposed to her plan anymore. Instead of playing the part of the resolute protector, he flushed red.

“Shouldn’t you pick one? It’s supposed to have meaning for you.”

“All of these books have meaning to me. I love astronomy, and I have many memories in this library. It would take me too long to choose. Plus, one astronomy book is going to have the same meaning as the next if I’m the one picking it. When it comes to the books in here, it’s not so much which one it is,” she said.

“…It’s that I pick it,” Draco smirked. “That’s so corny, Astoria. I don’t think the purpose of a grimoire is to soak it in romanticism.”

Astoria disagreed. If most grimoires were authored by lonely, brooding people with incurable misanthropy, hers should be made out of love of others.

“Go get me a book, please.”

Draco smiled to himself and left her at the desk. His ease had piqued her Legilimency. Astoria couldn’t quite tap into what he was thinking about her request, but she heard his warm thoughts faintly, as though they were music coming from the next room over. He was so utterly entrancing. She had to get a hold of herself. She opened the soft-cover handbook called _User-Safe Curses_ to begin. She could test them on the flying putti statues overhead. It wasn’t like she could make a punching bag out of Pansy Parkinson.

There were curses of all flavours in the book. One adhered the victim’s hands to their eyes so that they could neither see nor cast in retaliation. One dislocated joints, and another conjured controlled water to flood a building but not the land surrounding it. Astoria felt guilty for thinking of uses for each of them. She would need to overcome that feeling. She needed to make these spells her own.

“Did you find a book, Draco?”

“I’m looking at a few here…”

Astoria heard Draco clunking round the bookshelves and returned a few books to their place. He emerged from a middle row with a fairly thin one. He saw her reaction and justified the size, “It’s so you can carry it easily.”

“I thought it was because you didn’t want me collecting too many curses,” she answered. “I’m onto you, Draco.”

Draco walked over and rubbed her back, unaware of the tingling torture he created on her skin. He placed the book in front of her. It had dark blue binding with no title on the cover. It must have lost its protective jacket some time ago; the library stamp was directly on the binding. At least it wasn’t from Professor Sinistra’s personal collection. Astoria opened to the title page. It was called _The Belt of the Zodiac_. The author, Amaryllis Shotts, wasn’t anyone Astoria recognised from her studies, which would make the book a blank slate.

“Is that sufficient?” Draco asked.

“Yes, I’ll take my notes right in here. Thank you very much,” she said. “Oh, er, Draco?”

“Yes?”

“Can we please keep this secret?”

“I’d love to,” he said, and all the air in the room became unbreathable.

“You know something, Astoria?” Draco mumbled, daring to play with her hair that fell from under her hat. “All this Dark magic… I think you might be a bad example for me.”

“Oh, _that’s_ it,” she said, and she drew him down into a kiss.

He wasn’t clueless after all.

~

If Astoria had known they really _were_ going to be learning the Dark arts in class on Wednesday, she might not have spent over two hours collecting spells into her so-called grimoire the night before. That, combined with holding a Patronus Charm throughout Draco’s patrol shift again, put her in no condition to be dealing with both Carrows in the same day. Amycus Carrow, fuzzy-haired and stout, stomped all over the classroom as he waxed on about the might of curses. He claimed wizards proved their worth by their ability to harness the power of the Dark arts. The students were all tense, but very few of the Slytherins were opposed to trying some spells.

Amycus’s requirements for N.E.W.T. admission were far different from Professor Snape’s. Amycus had signed on _all_ sixth-year pure-bloods, thinking their magic was better, but there were plenty of pure-bloods whom Astoria did not trust with even a jinx. He signed on half-bloods only if they scored well, though they had to sit in the back.

Amycus had not given them any required readings since his own literacy was questionable. They would learn by his example, which would force them to keep their attention on him. Astoria tried to keep her gaze away from his repugnant, beady eyes, but he kept circling by her seat and staring down at her. Astoria’s habit of sitting next to the twins might not have been the best choice. He was certain to pay most attention to what his nieces were doing. Not to mention, he knew everything that had happened at the hotel.

“I know some of you must be scared of Dark magic. You been taught that it’s the opposite of natural magic. You need to get over that. Oh –– _get your bloody notes out_ , I’m not just talkin’ to myself up here.”

The students took out their supplies, but whether or not they’d use them was not up to Amycus.

“All right. Dark magic comes just as natural. Magic is divided into light and Dark, not natural and unnatural. Write that down. Now, who can tell me where light magic comes from?”

Everyone was either too frightened or too surprised that he had asked them a question to answer.

“Oh, c’mon! Didn’t that half-breed teach you _anything_ in Charms?” Amycus barked.

Amy Frome cleared her throat and raised her hand. Someone like her would probably have the answer he was looking for.

“Girl with the big earrings,” Amycus called on her.

“Erm, well nat–– I mean, light magic comes from one’s will.”

“That’s right,” Amycus nodded. “Simple enough. So, who can tell me where Dark magic comes from?”

He sauntered around more and ended up within arm’s reach of Astoria and the twins. Once he looked at them, he didn’t stop looking.

“No takers? I bet Astoria could tell us,” he leered.

Astoria resigned herself to playing along like everyone had cautioned her to, though her voice didn’t want to work.

“W-Well, Dark magic comes from our emotions, things of which we aren’t aware. Or, erm, perhaps things of which we don’t wish to be aware.”

“Nice textbook answer. You been reading in the Restricted Section,” Amycus exposed her. “So, _Astoria_ , tell us why the modern wizard shies away from Dark magic. What’s the danger?”

“Erm,” Astoria muttered, trying to remember all that Flora had told her. “It’s more prone to transforming into something one did not intend. There’s, erm, a significant risk of rebound of the energy into the caster.”

“Sure. And for those of you who don’t speak posh, what she’s tryna say is if you try and stop it, it only gets worse. It’ll turn in on you. Mess you right up.”

At last, Amycus stepped away to go breathe down other students’ necks.

“We all of us make Dark magic. You can feel it in your tension headaches, in your gut. It comes out when you say somethin’ you didn’t mean to say. When you do something and can’t stop. When your spells misfire ’cause you’re in a mood. Sometimes, if you keep it in long enough, you could create a poltergeist or a dementor. Or a boggart.”

Astoria didn’t need to look behind her to know that Amycus was circling back. She couldn’t tell whether the classroom was ice cold or scorching.

“Flora, why don’t you demonstrate our first curse for the class?”

Flora’s knuckles were already white over her wand. She stepped to the front. She did not look back at Hestia or Astoria.

“Now, when someone’s getting ready to have a go at you,” Amycus prefaced, as he was pretending that this was a real class, “You’ll want something quick and to the point, right? Right. What curse you wanna learn today?”

The students all stared at him, unnerved that he was trying to talk to them as a normal teacher. Everyone expected him to prattle off like Umbridge had, but Amycus was full of unpleasant surprises.

“No one? You, you there with the jacket. First off, take the jacket off. That ain’t part of your uniform. All right. Now what’s your name?”

He had honed in on Montel Davis. Flora closed her eyes.

“All right, Davis. What curse you wanna see the little lady do?” Amycus sneered.

“The countercurse for vomiting slugs,” Montel sneered back.

“What are you, a first-year?” Amycus berated him. “You there –– yeah, Manson. Give us a man’s curse, eh?”

Max Manson looked delighted to dream up something to make Flora do.

“The Bone-Shatter Curse!” he said.

“There! Now that’s a proper curse!” Amycus said, pleased. “The other Professor Carrow and I learnt that one at Durmstrang, believe it or not. They really prepare you for martial magic, they do. Nobody gets soft. That’s what we would like for this class, see.”

He began making rounds through the desks. Astoria had a decent idea about what was coming next.

“Let’s see… as them Muggles say…” he said, craning his thick neck over each student, “‘For my next trick, I’ll need a volunteer.’”

Amycus seemed pointedly interested in Luna Lovegood’s flamboyant outfit and the sweet expression she wore in spite of adversity. She had covered up her identification bracelet with many bangles and a big polka-dot ribbon tied in a bow. She was trying to balance being herself and not standing out. It wasn’t working, and she was about to feel the wrong end of a Bone-Shatter Curse. Ginny Weasley was seconds away from recklessly intervening.

“I’ll go,” Astoria said, standing up with equal recklessness.

Astoria and Luna made eye contact for less than a second. Astoria wasn’t dwelling on trying to make a friend. She just didn’t want to succumb to the same complacency so many people had in that Muggle city when Alecto had held Astoria at wandpoint in a wet shirt. Astoria didn’t know how this was going to go, but she was damned if she didn’t try. Hestia made a pitiful noise as Astoria walked to the front of the room. Imogen Stretton and her friend Olivia Shardlow looked at the unfolding scene with sadistic relish. The other students gawped at her choice to go to the front of the classroom, especially with a witch like Flora Carrow behind the wand.

Amycus’s beady glare prickled her, and she gave him her best one back until they both grew equally uncomfortable. Amycus walked up behind her instead. He grabbed her by the elbows, positioning her to stand perfectly in line with the floorboards. He then leaned over, digging his chin into her shoulder. His breath smelled awful.

“I knew you’d come,” Amycus whispered through an unpalatable laugh.

He jabbed his aspen wand in her spine. Astoria was slightly surprised that Flora didn’t say a word as they stood across from each other. She didn’t even shake her head in exasperation or frown any more than she had frowned already. Amycus removed himself from the line of fire and put his rump on a student’s desk in the front row.

Astoria had her wand up her sleeve. She wasn’t _that_ keen to feel this curse in Luna’s place. At the same time, she didn’t know if blocking the curse would have further consequences from Amycus. She wished she could just ask the arsehole, “Hey, are you planning to do something worse if I block it, or is this already bad enough? Just wondering.” Oh well. Astoria resigned herself to her fate.

“Crack on, Flora. Show the class what you can do,” Amycus pushed.

“ _Fractura maxima_ ,” Flora mouthed, and Astoria instantly parried the curse, the nib of her wand barely out of her sleeves.

A few people gasped, and Montel whooped from the back of the room. Astoria knew she hadn’t done any good keeping her wand in her sleeve; it was extremely obvious to Amycus what had happened.

“Fine work, ladies,” Amycus said, tapping his hand on his knee. “Now, you lot saw that movement Greengrass did with her wand, right? You hold tight and swipe the spell to the _opposite_ side as your wand hand. All right. Get that in your heads… because we’re about to see what happens when you don’t block it. _Expelliarmus_.”

Astoria’s wand rattled when it hit the floor, and it rolled up against the wall. She made a sad whistle in her exhaling breath. Hospital Wing it was. Professor Sinistra was going to be so angry with her for provoking Amycus. Astoria wondered if she might just use her bare hands for magic, as Professor Sinistra and her own mother had done on occasion.

“ _Fractura maxima_ ,” Flora barely enunciated again, and Astoria did indeed try to shoo it with her hands, but that was not the kind of thing any wand-raised teenager could do. For as gently as Flora had attempted to cast it, it destroyed Astoria’s right arm. Astoria fell to her knees on the hard floor, which only served to cause her more pain. She cried out, and the pain was so severe that she didn’t even think about anything else outside that moment. Hestia jumped out of her seat without permission, with her wand also pointed at Astoria. Astoria cowered like an abused animal, as Hestia’s image holding her wand in healing was nearly identical to Flora’s image before the attack.

“ _Eliminata_!” Hestia cast, and Astoria’s pain dulled substantially, but it didn’t vanish as the incantation might have led Astoria to guess. She was seeing coloured spots in her vision and felt she might pass out.

“ _Petrificus totalus_!” Amycus shouted cruelly at Hestia, and she fell half onto Astoria, half onto the floor.

Flora was motionless, watching them writhe on the floor with haunted eyes. From their angle, Astoria and Hestia saw only the back of Amycus’s cloak as he addressed the class.

“I think we learnt lots of valuable lessons today, eh? We learnt how to cast a good, solid curse, how to block it, what it does… And of course, what happens to you when you don’t listen to me.”

~

Astoria missed her first class in N.E.W.T. Arithmancy, an extremely important double-block, because she spent all that time in the Hospital Wing. Madam Pomfrey was livid this had happened to a student, but she had no one to report to any longer. She started dosing out some Skele-Gro to get Astoria’s recovery started, but amidst her work, two more students wilted through the entrance with gashes through their shirts, clutching bleeding lacerations across their abdomens. Madam Pomfrey, who was by all accounts a tough lady, dropped the bottle she was pouring, and it splattered all over the floor. Skele-Gro was not a potion she could afford to have wasted, and she cussed at the sudden unsteadiness of her hand. She rose to action and patched what she could whilst the bleeding students were still standing. She led them along to beds and battled hard against Dark magic to truly seal the cuts. She then returned to her office cabinets to retrieve more Skele-Gro for Astoria. Not typically one to get overwhelmed, Madam Pomfrey could be heard crying quietly through the door in the few moments she was in there.

Astoria took her medicine, but she gravely feared the consequences of being truant from Muggle Studies with Alecto and pretended to be much better than she was in order to get discharged. She showed up to Muggle Studies with her arm tucked in the same sling as her wand. She couldn’t use either. She had a decent hunch that this was the same curse Rabastan had cast on Professor Sinistra during the prison breakout two years prior. For some reason, that made it easier to bear the pain. Astoria sat next to Flora and Hestia, because Alecto would have question her otherwise. Astoria didn’t want to leave them anyway. Flora was guilt-ridden, and Hestia was shaken.

Alecto stood with her hands folded at the front of the classroom and watched the remaining students pour in. Like her brother, she directed all half-bloods to the back, though she failed to realise they _preferred_ to be farther from her.

Everyone attended this class even if they had never had a Muggle Studies course in their life. Well-aware of what sort of propaganda this would entail, a few Gryffindors were indeed absent, and Alecto wrote their names on a piece of parchment with bad intent. Her hair was pulled into a tight bun, and she had an ornamental piece to keep it in place that looked like a cage. Her robes fanned outward on either side, trailing so far that they kept people farther from her than they would have walked regardless. She was learning all the students’ faces. Her eyes lingered a long time on Astoria’s arm sling, as if trying to undress the pain beyond the fabric.

“As you heard, I’ll be replacing Burbage,” Alecto boomed once the bells tolled to begin class.

Astoria’s memories flashed with what Draco had seen happen to the other teacher, and the pangs in her arm met with curdles in her stomach. Flora and Hestia likely knew their professor had been killed from collateral information, but they hadn’t seen it. Astoria wasn’t going to let them know how Charity Burbage had died.

“This class will be different from what you’re used to, since I won’t be letting you chickadees near radioactive microwaves and things,” Alecto continued. “Rest assured we have your best interest in mind.”

Some Ravenclaws in the back scoffed. In contrast to Amycus’s belligerent nature, Alecto simply ignored them. That was no testament to Alecto’s beneficence; Astoria clearly remembered the infected rug burn swelling on her skin last month.

“I don’t think they’ve done a good job of orienting you to what is happening here, so I hope the information makes sense to you,” Alecto said. “I am a Death Eater.”

Hestia rolled her eyes. Astoria had assumed that the change in the administration was going to be hush-hush, so when Alecto acknowledged what everyone knew, she didn’t know what to expect.

“I became a Death Eater when I was a bit older than you are for the sake of my family. I’m sure you know at least some of our group’s history. It’s not an easy job, and you have to earn your place. Our masks show our rank. I have mine here, and like Professor Carrow’s, it’s decorated on the edge with the same mantling as our family’s coat of arms. Sometimes it’s the little things, you know? Better than the silly outfits they made employees wear at the old Fortescue’s.”

Diane Carter chuckled stupidly from across the room. Astoria felt like spitting.

“We’re here in the school because the Dark Lord is thankfully alive,” Alecto explained. “Headmaster Snape is a first-rank Death Eater. That came as a surprise to many of you. Now, I know I have all four Houses here, and traditionally those in the House of Slytherin run in our circle. Xander Lofthouse just left here, and he has taken up the Mark. Draco Malfoy has done the same; he is one of the Prefects. We’re hoping to get our girls ready for when their time comes.”

Alecto slinked in front of Flora and Hestia. Flora crossed her arms, and Hestia put her head down.

“They aren’t too keen on it right now, though,” Alecto announced with cold hilarity in her voice. “That’s understandable. It’s very difficult what I do. I have to judge what is best for Wizardkind.”

“It’s all needless violence!” shouted Marco Amaya, a bold Gryffindor who began gagging on his own tongue not long after Alecto’s spell hit him.

“Do you know what’s _needless_ violence, Amaya‽” Alecto screamed.

The curtains shut, the candles extinguished, and the entire classroom went dark as night. Astoria felt like she was in imminent danger, but with her wand hand out of commission, there was nothing she could do. Everyone shifted in their seats, but the whole class was afraid to move in a room where they could not see anything. The moment their eyes adjusted, though, a ridiculously bright light shone before them. It came from a conjured floating sphere, larger than the lesson board, that loosely resembled a crystal ball. The sphere, which might have been immaterial, began to rotate, and the faster it rotated, the more wind it kicked up in the classroom. Astoria squinted at its brightness. In its rotation, it began to show moving images.

Within the awful globe, the students watched in horror as a young woman was seized by a group of people in old-looking clothing and dragged off to a field where a large post had been set up. They beat her until her face and mouth bled and she was nearly unconscious. These images came with no sound; the students’ imaginations filled it in. Alecto was the only one talking.

“What I have here is an extracted memory passed down through the centuries. This memory belonged to Ichabod Fawley. He was six years old at the time. This woman is his mother.”

A few people in the attacking group dropped large satchels and pulled out ropes to bind the woman. Her head flopped side to side as they lifted her body and made a group effort to tie her to the post.

“This was a widespread practice, you see, and why we live apart from Muggles to this day. I will add that it was almost unheard of for wizards to meet this fate, as the Muggles targeted women. They target women for everything. They believed female witchcraft to be the same thing as devil worship,” Alecto’s voice carried.

The people in the memory had amassed tinder beneath the woman at the post. Astoria shut her eyes, and she felt Flora grip her uninjured hand. When several minutes had gone by without any sound in the classroom or any comment from Alecto, Astoria slowly opened her eyes.

She had miscalculated, and she saw the witch’s charred skin falling off of her bones, into a roaring fire.

“I am showing you this lest we forget our history,” Alecto said softly.

~

Astoria lay in the Hospital Wing, waiting for Madam Pomfrey to do further work on her arm. The Matron was extremely busy with other students who had taken hits from the Carrows. Astoria and all the students in the beds round her were supposed to be “examples.” She wondered if the demand for first aid would die down when the students would stop trying, or if this would be what the wing looked like the whole year. Madam Pomfrey was working on the students in danger first, followed by the little ones. That was fine. Astoria didn’t mind being last if it meant she didn’t have to do anything for the evening.

Flora and Hestia were at her side, but annoyingly, they had brought along Alexa Crover. She had a loud voice and kept talking about what they had seen in Muggle Studies. Astoria wasn’t sure if she could wake up each day to Alexa’s noise for the next two years of school. She understood why the Death Eaters wanted to consolidate the rooms –– some students in other Houses would have a dorm all to themselves if they hadn’t made it look normal –– but she wished Slytherin and its one opening had been exempt. Still, there were worse things than being slightly annoyed, and there were far worse people out there than Alexa Crover.

“Haven’t you ever heard of illusionary magic?” Flora argued when Alexa’s distress level had not waned since the last class. “Alecto’s relying on everyone’s ignorance. Memories can’t be viewed like that! You need a Pensieve to watch memories! She just conjured up illusions for us to watch and lied about it!”

“I never heard of a Pensieve. I’m sorry, it seemed so real,” Alexa said.

“That’s what Alecto wants you to think!” Flora blustered.

“Well, I’m glad the memory wasn’t actually real, but that is exactly the kind of thing that happened back then, isn’t it? It’s still realistic. We’ve always heard about witch burnings, but I guess I never pictured it happening in my head,” Alexa said.

“Ugh! Like Flora said, that’s what she _wants_ you to be thinking, Alexa,” Hestia interjected. “I’m not saying it didn’t happen, because it did, but she wants us to get all worked up about it so she can spend next class ranting about how we need to kill Muggles in return!”

Alexa grew embarrassed. Flora and Hestia looked to Astoria as though she would add something to their argument. Astoria didn’t have anything to add. When Alecto had said Muggles accused witches of being satanic, it made Astoria think of the bruise on Rhiannon’s face before the beginning of their fourth year. Rhiannon’s Muggle parents had abused her terribly because she showed signs of magic, and this was the twentieth century! Astoria hated Alecto and wasn’t about to support a single thing she did. It was just that… maybe not as much had changed in society as Flora and Hestia thought. They both knew Rhiannon had been abused by her parents, but because they were pure-blood and still abused, they may not have processed the underpinnings of Rhiannon’s experience.

“I can’t figure out why she bothered to tell everyone about Death Eater stuff,” Hestia conversed. “I thought we were supposed to keep mum. It’s not like people are gonna jump up and join her, either.”

Flora was livid about the elder Carrows, and it made every word she said drip with venom.

“I don’t know what she has in mind, Hestia. Reverse psychology, probably. No one expected them to be open about the takeover. I bet she thinks if she’s open about it, students won’t shut her out automatically. She’s evil.”

Alexa was quite alarmed and fidgety as the twins were discussing their own aunt that way, since Alexa had never had a family system like that. Hestia softened and tried to add some humour:-

“On top of being evil, Alecto always eats the last of my snacks at home.”

Astoria’s attention was drawn to the door. Professor Sinistra had invited herself in whilst Madam Pomfrey was concentrating on a first-year student trembling with hives. Astoria rolled to her side and quickly tried to stifle her memories of boggarts and grimoires. Occlumency was a real struggle

“What’d she give you, Astoria?” the professor asked, her silken robes swishing over the hospital blanket as she moved to examine Astoria’s arm.

“The Bone-Shatter Curse,” Astoria answered.

“No, not Flora. Madam Pomfrey,” Professor Sinistra clarified. (Flora, meanwhile, was profoundly disgusted that she’d had the responsibility of the curse placed on her).

“Er… she did a bone-setting thing and a chiropractic Mending Charm… and I’m on low-dose Skele-Gro,” Astoria tried to recall. “Hestia used the Numbing Spell on me way earlier.”

“M-hm,” the professor said.

She was trying to reach Astoria’s eyes. Astoria looked away pointedly.

“Please don’t use that, Professor. I can simply tell you what happened,” she said.

Professor Sinistra took a step back from her. The professor was very unlike her own mother, but Astoria knew a motherly glare when she saw one.

“Well, Astoria, I already know what happened. I was only trying to see how much pain you have.”

Astoria sat up, saying, “Well, I can tell you that, too. It doesn’t feel good, and I can’t use my arm for three days. That’s what the Matron told me earlier.”

Professor Sinistra glanced over her shoulder at Madam Pomfrey, who was now slaving over a second-year whose eyelids had swelled shut.

“You don’t have three days to be helpless, Astoria,” she said rigidly. “Didn’t I tell you to lie low? That’s the first thing I told you. Now look at you.”

Astoria was growing quite angry at the professor for barging in here with Legilimency and snippy words. Too bad she wasn’t going to use Legilimency to actually understand how Astoria felt.

“Would you rather have had this happen to Luna Lovegood? That’s why I did this in the first place,” she said frantically.

The other three girls were watching the conversation intently.

“Astoria, I can assure you that when the Carrows want to hurt someone, they aren’t going to stop just because you step in between. Look around you. You might have taken the hit this time, and that shows your good nature, but the next time you intervene on someone’s behalf, they will simply hurt both of you! You _cannot_ save everyone.”

“What do you suggest I do, then?” Astoria snapped.

“I suggest you not get maimed,” the professor returned with equal frustration. “Hold out your arm for me, and I’ll fix it.”

Professor Sinistra’s long wand slid out from her billowing sleeves. She held the point ready.

“W-What are you going to do to it?” Astoria stalled.

Professor Sinistra huffed.

“I’m going to give you the Dark Mark, Astoria. What do you _think_ I’m going to do?”

Astoria mumbled an anxious “sorry” and held out her arm.

“ _AAAGH_! _Ugh_!”

“All right,” Professor Sinistra said. “You’re all better. Go sign yourself out and free up this bed for another student.”

Professor Sinistra walked the girls back to the common room. Once brought to “safety,” Astoria threw her bag on one of the desks by the window. Flora and Hestia knew her well enough to leave her alone, but Alexa was repeatedly asking her if there was anything she could do, if everything was all right (a stupid question), and if she was going to come to dinner later. Astoria gave noncommittal answers until Alexa walked away half-satisfied.

Astoria emptied her books on the desk. _Development in Darkwork, 1800-1899_ was more about history and Dark wizards than anything and wasn’t going to give Astoria what she needed. _Blood Magick_ was probably pushing it. She kept flipping through _User-Safe Curses_ trying to find something that would capture the anger she felt so strongly. What could she defend herself with? What could she do to not be a stupid bystander?

 _User-Safe Curses_ was organised based on schools of magic, which Astoria had found surprising when she first read it. She thought that only natural magic was divided into fields like Charms, Transfiguration, and Arithmancy and that Dark magic was just Dark magic. Shows what she knew. She had already copied several charm-based curses into her not-so-magical grimoire, so she turned to the Transfiguration chapter. There was a curse where you could turn someone into a giant slug, which had happened to Draco before. Astoria wondered how many students had had their hands on this book before her. It made her feel like a late-bloomer.

Astoria didn’t trust herself with Transfiguration much anyway, so even though the book was called _User-Safe Curses_ , that didn’t mean it was safe for her. However, the arithmanceutical curses felt too much like Max Manson’s sort of thing. There was a small Ancient Runes section, so even though Astoria hadn’t excelled in that class, she figured it would be worth a shot. It turned out that if one engraved certain runes into a room, one could set booby-traps. Professor Babbling had never told them anything interesting like that before! Astoria copied it down vigorously, but the practical use was not so promising. She needed something to hit a Carrow with in an emergency, not an elaborate environmental curse. Something they couldn’t reasonably parry. Astoria flipped through the rest of the book without much luck. She would have to find time alone and make another trip to the library tomorrow morning.

“Hello, Astoria.”

Draco took a seat next to her and folded his arms on the desk.

“I suppose you’ve heard what happened,” Astoria said.

“Mm, I get to hear everything,” he answered. “How are you doing?”

“Professor Sinistra had to break my arm even more to ‘un-break’ it, I guess.”

“Well, I can see that your arm is fixed. I meant how are you doing mentally?”

“I’m not in a foetal position yet,” she said sardonically.

Draco studied her setup, and said, “How’s the Dark magic coming? You haven’t done anything yet, right? You’re just reading.”

“I’m reading, yes. I’m trying to catch up before I try anything. I have cast magic that could be considered Dark before, though. My friends and I used to practise duelling in the Astronomy library. It’s not like I’m going to have an allergic reaction.”

“Aren’t you funny,” Draco said. “I’ve been thinking about you doing this all day. I was wondering about your wand.”

“My wand has been much better, really,” Astoria said honestly.

“I’m glad to hear it. I was hoping, er… Whenever you decide to practise something, would you come to get me first? I have experience with this, and I want to make sure you’re okay. Don’t go at it alone.”

“You also want to see me do it, Draco,” she said, eyebrows raised.

“I want to see what you do _with_ it,” he claimed. “Someone has to be there to make sure you don’t shrink your own head or something, so unless you trust Flora to save you…”

“I promise I’ll come and get you first,” Astoria said.

Draco stretched his arms across the table as if to see how far they would go, which was rather endearing, to be honest.

“Can you promise me something else?” he asked.

As much as his accidental allure made her want to instantly say yes, she responded, “That depends. What’s the matter?”

“I want you to take that blood magic book back,” he said sharply.

She wasn’t opposed. The book was written entirely with Anglo-Saxon runes, rendering it too much trouble to understand. Astoria was keeping it on hand as a confidence booster at this point. Draco kept staring at her.

“Well, I’m not walking all the way back up there with this tonight. I’ll return it tomorrow before Charms,” she said. “I will do it, though. I don’t have much use for it.”

“All right. I was going to offer to take it back for you, but I really don’t want it to suck my blood.”

“Excellent point,” Astoria said, and she danced her fingers up his arm toward his neck until he laughed and shooed her away.

Astoria was grateful that the alarm clocks in the dormitories could be enchanted so that only the person closest would hear. Hers was, once again, set for four in the morning. It was only the third night of sending her Patronus out with Draco, but it was exhausting. She wished he would learn the charm himself, but she knew he’d been trying for over three years unsuccessfully. He wasn’t the one worried about dementors; she was.

She had been trying to get to bed at a decent time in order to do this. After all, Draco had to wake up at this hour as well. She wasn’t adjusted yet. At Professor Sinistra’s, she had often slept late. Astoria grabbed her Arithmancy textbook and shuffled out to the common room in the dark. She was already way behind in Arithmancy homework even though she had missed but one class, and she wondered how she would cope each Tuesday morning with Astronomy not ending until 11:30 on Monday nights.

“You don’t have to do this,” Draco said for the third night in a row.

“Did you learn the Patronus Charm or how to get a dementor to listen to you?” she returned.

“No, but…”

“Then hush.”

Draco was never in an argumentative mood in the presence of her Patronus and peacefully left for his not-so-peaceful job. Astoria hoped he didn’t catch anybody he would have to turn in to the Carrows or Snape. Her Patronus also doubled as a huge light source, so perhaps any foolish students would see Draco coming and learn their lesson the easy way.

Astoria confirmed that Draco was still alive and well at breakfast and then went back to sleep until lunchtime. Charms was at two-fifteen. Tired, but determined not to skip classes taught by the real teachers, Astoria hiked upstairs to start her day. That is to say, she tried. She quickly discovered the importance of sticking together in the castle as a certain opportunist ambushed her before she could get any food in her stomach.

“Nuh-uh. This way,” said Amycus, emerging from a corridor.

Astoria wasn’t so shocked that he hexed her legs to walk where he wanted, but she was shocked that he was choosing to miss lunch after his ever so tiring morning of beating up children. This was a cleverer move than Astoria would have expected from Amycus; his nieces would think she was sleeping through lunch and wouldn’t investigate. Amycus hexed Astoria along to the D.A.D.A. classroom without even the poltergeist noticing.

“Where’s Alecto?” Astoria ventured, preferring, at the very least, the familiarity of her to the uncertainty of Amycus.

“Eatin’ what’s left of my picnic pie, I’d imagine. Why, you want me to get her, _too_?” Amycus jeered, twisting Astoria’s ankle with the hex.

Astoria’s response didn’t matter. They were already walking into his office. He shut and locked the door and marionetted her limbs into a sitting position on the single wooden chair opposite his desk. The hex expired soon after; Amycus did not replace it, so Astoria sat still and did nothing to encourage him to.

Where Snape had once done the whole place up with artfully grim décor, Amycus had not bothered. Simply because of how plain it was, the office itself gave no outward impression of evil. However, it was not exactly pleasant. The wall behind the desk held an expensive frame displaying a large document. The double-headed eagle in the Durmstrang crest still threw its wings to the wind over words long since rescinded:-

> **DURMSTRANG INSTITUTE**
> 
> **Headmistress: Torbjørg Arshad (Charms Master, Distinguished Polymath Crone)**
> 
> _This letter hereby declares that Amycus Carrow has been accepted to the Durmstrang Institute. Enclosed is a waiver of liability that must be signed and returned no later than 20 June in order to undergo the Memory Modifying Charm with regards to the Institute’s location…_

Astoria left Durmstrang and came back to Hogwarts. Amycus had trays for parchment on either side of his desk, in between which was a black and silver placard that read, “ _Amycus Carrow, Deputy Headmaster_.” A trio of dip pens made of bone sat in a holder behind it. There was a small, framed picture placed at one corner of his desk at the angle of a perfect isosceles triangle. Astoria craned slightly forward to see, and the photograph took her backward into another world.

Alecto, more than a decade younger, was perched on a sky-blue garden bench, radiating a smile she couldn’t make now if her life depended on it. Her Dark Mark was a warm, faint pink –– dormant, out of mind, allowing her to brush aside her unconvicted crimes in the First War. One of the girls –– it must have been Flora –– was at Alecto’s legs, practically hopping upwards to get her attention. The back of her head had soft, wispy hair, and she could not have been older than three. Her chubby hands waved a pair of picked, sunny dandelions upward. Alecto eyed the camera with a smirk, reached down to Flora’s level with effort, and acted like there was no greater gift in the world than dandelions. A short distance behind was a moment Amycus had not intended to capture in his camera: the girls’ father laughed at Hestia whilst she dug messily through the dirt. Hestia tossed a flobberworm she found into the air for her dad to catch. She grabbed another one and flung it off-camera, pointing and giggling her head off. Astoria watched the scene replay in quiet shock.

 _What happened_?

Astoria also questioned Amycus’s choice to keep this photograph out. The picture was, in her opinion, ridiculing the family’s current dynamic. Having the photograph on his desk meant nothing if he wouldn’t make any effort to repair the damage done in the interim.

Today’s Amycus was nearly ready to spew something at Astoria, but he became distracted by the unevenness of his parchment trays. There was nothing but the sound of his wheezy respiration for a minute whilst he rearranged his entire desk to be, as far as Astoria could tell, exactly how it was before.

Amycus finally contended his way into the studded leather seat behind the desk, but his face pinched up. He reached beneath himself and recovered a single hair grip from the person who had helped him move in what few items he had brought. He grumbled and put it carefully on his desk, evidently not realising how expendable such an accessory was.

“We didn’t think you’d come to school,” he said, eyeing Astoria closely.

She looked down to her feet.

“We thought you’d abandon our girls. Then we’d have to go out looking. Scare you up, put you in Azkaban. But you’re here. Sinistra must think it’s dangerous for you either way, right? That you’re better off in here than out there? Plus, she’s got that teacher money to make. All that effort to run off from Alecto, and Sinistra threw you under the same roof again,” he mocked.

Astoria studied her socks.

“Show me your arm.”

Astoria complied, expecting him to shatter its bones again. He told her to turn it palm-up. He told her to make a circular motion with it. He told her to flap her hand. All this she did. Perhaps, she thought, he would break it permanently after this examination.

“Who fixed you?” he interrogated. “It wasn’t Poppy.”

For as dim as he was, or rather, pretended to be, Amycus knew that it had taken something darker to fix her arm so quickly, and that that magic would live in her body longer than anything Madam Pomfrey was willing to use.

“Don’t talk much, eh? Funny. Alecto says you gave her lip. Look at me, Greengrass.”

Astoria lifted her eyes to his stubbled chin and watched his shoulders lean forward.

“Show me that book you got in your bag.”

Astoria didn’t have many to pick from. She knew which one she was talking about. It was somehow embarrassing that she could hardly lift it. If she was stronger, she might not be sitting here right now. She hoisted it onto her lap.

“ _Blood Magick_. Interesting pick,” Amycus said, his beady eyes wider than usual. “Not too many folks use blood magic, Greengrass, not even Dark wizards. Not too many things where you can use blood magic for good.”

Astoria waited, thinking she’d have to hand the book over so he could pick something out of it to cast upon her. Then again, he wouldn’t be able to read the old language. She had trouble comprehending it herself.

“We know a gang who’s right into blood magic. Lestranges. Your loverboy lives with ’em. Did you know that? All three. If you sleep with Malfoy, you should count on getting close with them. _That reminds me_... Two of ’em read minds. You can tell which two ’cause the both of ’em went _mad_ ,” Amycus smiled darkly.

Astoria swallowed, but her mouth was too dry. Amycus was leading the conversation, and he let it pause. He repaired a small chip in the wood of his desk that had been tormenting his periphery. Whilst he was occupied, Astoria slid the book back in her bag. Amycus looked back up at her.

“Alecto tells me you saw her boggart.”

Astoria found the floor again.

“No, no. Look at me.”

Astoria tried to see his eyes as a shape, not a place.

“She tells me when you get in front of a boggart, it goes invisible. So what, you got no fears?” he grunted. “Not even after Stretton’s group killed your family? You must be a heartless little shitehawk. No fear, no care. One of them dead Greengrasses oughtta show up as your boggart.”

Astoria’s fingers hurt in her fists.

“What I fear is deception,” she admitted.

“ _Deception_! Y’poor thing! Got upset your parents lied to you about Father Christmas?” he asked in acidic mirth.

Amycus laughed at his own joke some more, but when he calmed down, he studied her with hatred. He started cracking his knuckles, a nasty noise in a quiet room.

“Now,” he said, “ignorance is supposed to be bliss. Your greatest fear’s ignorance. Now _that_ , Greengrass, is real thought-provoking… That ain’t no ordinary boggart.”

His tone worsened.

“Mine ain’t ordinary, either. I’m inclined to run towards it, not away from it, see. Know what my boggart is?”

“No, sir.”

“You do.”

“I’m sorry, s-sir, I don’t.”

“ _You do_. Because in a way, you saw my boggart, Greengrass. It looks exactly like my sister seeing her boggart,” Amycus rumbled. “My greatest fear, it’s Alecto terrified and alone.”

He cracked one of his knuckles too hard and shook his hand.

“So, what’d you make of it?”

“M-Make of…?” she stammered.

“ _Alecto’s boggart_.”

Astoria answered, “I didn’t make anything of it.”

“You didn’t make anything of it,” Amycus repeated slowly, disbelievingly.

Astoria became chillingly aware of how Amycus managed to earn a Sorting of Slytherin when he came here. He was not one for maths, but oh, was he was calculating in another sense.

“You made that boggart manifest,” he snarled, twisting his pens in their holders. “Alecto told me you got rid of the boggart on her behalf, that she got through to you. It’s like she’s forgotten your nature, Greengrass. You _made_ that boggart, and you tricked her into walking in there. That whole middle-of-the-night thing was part of your plan.”

“No,” Astoria gasped, though she doubted her defences could help her. “No, I didn’t –– I wouldn’t –– I didn’t do that on purpose.”

“ _Look at me_ , _Greengrass_.”

She couldn’t, not even when she heard him stand up and saw his shadow approach her. In her field of vision, shirt became collar, collar became neck, neck became jaw, and she shut her eyes. At first, only his breath was on her face. Once his hands were, too, she reached for her wand despite all warnings that fighting will make it worse. His curse would hit first, surely, so she would have to account for a moment of recovery in her retaliation…

 _Or not_?

Amycus took Alecto’s lost hair grip to a loose curl, pinned it perfectly behind Astoria’s ear, and withdrew. She opened her eyes when his breath was gone. He stood with one hand on the side of his desk, his back to her.

“A Legilimens,” his voice grated. “I knew it. You looked my sister dead in the eyes with your fancy trick, and you _still_ left her. No –– scratch that –– you fucking _ran_.”

Amycus’s shoulders lurched. He still didn’t turn round. Instead, he shook his head at the floor.

“I oughtta kill you.”

In terrified silence, Astoria lifted herself from the seat and started inching towards the door.

“ _GO THEN_ , _GET OUT_ , _GO_!” Amycus screamed, Bombarding the door open and sending more of the same at all of his walls, damaging them in his outburst.

Astoria ran longer than she had breath for. Somehow, though shaking, she managed to report to Charms and not draw attention to the stray, intermittent tears that fell. Yet by Transfiguration, her focus had dulled to nothing, and she once again cursed whoever had decided that part of a licensed astronomer’s job description should include this N.E.W.T.

On her way back, she headed for the library to return the leaden book on blood magic, which had become as heavy as her heart since the trip to Amycus’s office. She stood outside to write her initials in the return record, and she figured she’d flip through it one more time before turning it in. Her eyes landed on a brief passage above a rather grisly illustration of a man’s body contorting beyond its limitations.

> _The blood of a witch or wizard shall rend the body thus_
> 
> _when drawn from the vein by wand under the incantation_
> 
> _Ceargealdot steorran ríed_
> 
> _Unlybban spiwe_ _bl_ _ð_ _dþigen_.
> 
> _It is hereby declared that this spell is reserved for an unrighteous soul._

Based on the illustration, it didn’t look like there’d be much hope for anybody who took that kind of hit. Astoria closed the book, lugged it back into the library, and hoisted it onto the return rack. Madam Pince scowled at Astoria when the book slipped from her fingers and hit the rack with a loud thud. Astoria bit her lip and gently placed her other rentals on the rack. She hurried back to the Restricted Section to find something not quite as deep as blood magic, but worse than a human-to-slug transfiguration.

The Restricted Section had more people in it than usual, most of them Slytherins. Astoria felt like being there made her look bad, especially considering the meltdown she had had the day before. Still, she got to business squinting at the titles on old bindings. Many of them were still unrelated to what she sought, such as _Banshee’s Breath and Other Ethereal Essences for Poisonmaking_ and _How to Become a Hag_. Astoria rolled a ladder over to search the upper shelves and got somewhat distracted by the nice view of the library. She was watching the tops of people’s heads, and vaguely wondering when Professor Sinistra would let her have the fourth volume of _Legilimency in Practice_ back so she could finish it. She spotted Pansy Parkinson and Diane Carter in the next row over and found herself in a perfect position to eavesdrop.

“Oh, remember this book, Pansy? We used one of the jinxes in here on Hermione.”

“Oh. Hermione…?”

“Hermione Granger,” Diane laughed. “Is there another Hermione here? What a stupid name.”

“Oh. I don’t remember her,” said Parkinson strangely.

“Haha, yeah, maybe I’ll forget her too since she’s gone. I hope she’s in Azkaban.”

“If she’s a Mudblood, she’ll probably end up there,” Parkinson responded.

“Er, well, she _is_ a Mudblood. You’ve got to remember her! The Gryffindor girl with Harry Potter.”

“Hm, no, not particularly.”

“Oh, Pansy, you’re trying to fool me. Your least favourite Mudblood in the whole school. We jinxed her.”

“I’ve jinxed a lot of people, Diane.”

“I’m starting to think you’re the one who’s been jinxed. You knew that bucktoothed nerd for six whole years!”

“I don’t pay much attention to Mudbloods. She must not have been worth my time,” shrugged Parkinson.

Diane was alarmed, but she didn’t push Parkinson about it anymore, likely because she didn’t want to push her all the way to Madam Pomfrey to be evaluated for a Memory Charm. Astoria wondered if Hermione’s friends had cast the charm before running off into the wilderness. She wished they would have cast a stronger one.

Astoria finally found some wonderfully interesting titles that were sure to protect her. _Harnessing the Inner Crone_ : _Dark Magic for Single Mothers_ by Fanetta Noll, _Darkness as Element_ by Avernale Styx, and _Sympathetic Magic for the Not-So-Sympathetic_ by Alyssa Poylop floated gently down as Astoria descended the ladder. She already knew what Flora thought of her pursuit of the Arts, but she hesitated more when she thought about her mother and Rhiannon. What would they say if they saw her like this? Not only that, but how much trouble would she be in if Professor Sinistra realised what she was doing?

It would be okay. Her mother had used vicious spells to protect the family in battle. Rhiannon used a Death Eater’s wand for heaven’s sake, and who knew what Professor Sinistra was capable of. Astoria’s magic had been belittled her whole life; she wanted to be more like the people she admired, especially now that her safety was compromised. Almost as if to encourage her decisions, she found “Aurora Sinistra, 09/15/1978 – 10/14/1978” written on the borrowing card for _Sympathetic Magic_ as she, too, signed out the book.

The next time Astoria saw Draco, she pretended her day had been normal and asked him about Parkinson’s abnormal behaviour. He was puzzled by her story for a few minutes. Then he made a loud noise.

“Theodore must have… er.”

“Put a Memory Charm on her?” Astoria clarified. If that was the case, Theodore was much more precise and careful about his Memory Charms than his father had been.

“It’s a long story, but we had to make it so that Pansy wouldn’t know about my… er, mission last year. Theodore must have taken her memories about Granger along with it. He had no way of knowing school would be like this. I guess he was into her,” Draco revealed.

“That makes sense. I wish Parkinson would have forgotten more than just that,” Astoria remarked.

“Memory Charms are really dangerous, so we had to be careful. I suppose Theodore and Granger were fairly cosy until his dad pointed a wand in her face at the Ministry battle.”

Astoria nodded. Since Theodore and Astoria were supposed to hate each other so as not to be interrogated about Nott Sr, she hadn’t talked to him. Even when Theodore helped defend Astoria from being sliced up by Imogen, he had made a case that he was acting on the “don’t kill viable purebloods” order rather than their friendship. She wondered how he was taking Hermione’s absence and the danger she was in. He didn’t have anyone to talk to about it besides Astoria. Draco hated Hermione, and Tracey Davis and Max Lazenby hadn’t even known about Theodore’s feelings. So… Nott Sr really had tried to hurt Hermione in the Department of Mysteries. How disgusting. Astoria once again thought of what would have happened if Lucius Malfoy had attacked Quennell Park.

 _I had to kill Xavier Lofthouse and Caleb Price_... _What if_ …?

She forced the scenario out of her mind with all of her willpower.

That night, Flora was rustling her school supplies as Astoria was trying to relax her body and mind. It wasn’t that late, but on account of Astoria’s self-imposed duty to protect her damsel from dementors, the ruckus seemed uncalled for, and she asked Flora what she was doing.

“I’m getting ready for Astronomy, Astoria!” she harrumphed.

Astoria remembered that she had not talked to her roommates about their schedules in great detail this year. She felt so guilty. She had no idea Flora wanted to continue to N.E.W.T. Astronomy at all; she would have congratulated her, but her chance had expired.

“I’m glad you decided to continue it,” Astoria said shyly. She knew for a fact that Hestia would not pursue the class.

“It’d be stupid of me not to. Everything’s astronomy,” Flora said.

Hestia and Alexa shared a look of doubt, but Astoria felt happy. She didn’t know Flora ever acknowledged the role of astronomical forces in everyday magic; most people didn’t. Not to mention it had always been hard to tell the difference between Flora liking something and hating it.

“If you ever need anything for class, Flora…”

“Of course I’ll come to you,” Flora said with a small smile, and she left for the long journey upstairs.

When Astoria was brushing her hair before bedtime, she snagged something painfully, so she ran her fingers through her hair. Alecto’s hair grip, which she had forgotten she was wearing, fell onto the bathroom floor. Astoria splashed her face with water.

She set her head on the pillow and shut her eyes. Her shoulders eased; the world went dark and quiet. Then with a pang, she shot up again, breathing in gasps. She had heard Alecto’s voice in a hell somewhere between awake and asleep.

She grabbed her chest, as if that would tell her heart to slow. When she took a proper look round the room, she saw Hestia propped up on her elbow, looking displeased.

“I’m so sorry,” Astoria snivelled. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s not that,” said Hestia, and she continued to stare Astoria down.

“Bad dream,” Astoria coughed, because she had no better word for the reality of it.

“Must’ve been,” said Hestia swiftly, “seeing as you called out to _her_.”

Rattled, Astoria could not rest until Flora returned from Astronomy.

Astoria’s Friday was not pleasant, since she had Transfiguration at nine sharp and both Carrows again. Alecto gave a lengthy lecture about how the Wizarding population was forced into secrecy by Muggles and why there were hindering laws banning underage magic. She said that this secrecy had further stunted the growth of already small magical communities by limiting them to “house spells,” and that few learned powerful magic. She pulled out a map of the Wizarding United Kingdom and showed that there were practically no “Wizard-only” communities left.

Amycus was not as verbose as Alecto and not prone to lectures. Incredibly, he made no threat toward Astoria, but he did pull the same stunt he had on Wednesday, dragging Flora up to the front of the room and making her demonstrate harmful curses on her fellow students. This time, unfortunately, it _was_ Luna who took the hit, and she had to be treated for the Thundering Tinnitus Curse. Astoria copied spells into her grimoire all weekend, but nothing could be done about the Knuckle Fusing Curse cast by Flora on Ginny Weasley on Monday morning. Hestia offered to secretly trade places with Flora next time they had class since Amycus kept putting her through this, but Flora refused.

“He’s trying to desensitise me,” Flora said. “I’m more afraid of what will happen if he tells us apart. They’re smart to that trick.”

The one and only thing Astoria looked forward to about this school year was her final year in Astronomy. Everything she had worked for, from the time she was told she could not go to Hogwarts onward, had come to this. She was going to give it her all regardless of Death Eaters and governmental collapse. She’d take her Astronomy N.E.W.T. in Azkaban with Voldemort as the test proctor if she had to.

Her seventh-year N.E.W.T. Astronomy class was now the smallest class held in Hogwarts. Hannah Abbott had left last year after her mother had been murdered, Hermione Granger was currently evading the same fate, and Neville Longbottom had simply discontinued it to dedicate more to Herbology. Somewhere on the globe, Adamina was probably still angry at Astoria even though she thought her dead, so Swati Pevekar and Anthony Goldstein sat quietly without their fellow Ravenclaw. Tracey and Theodore had all their supplies ready. Draco stood back up from his seat and pulled out Astoria’s chair for her. Everyone was looking, but she couldn’t control her smile. Draco used to kick the back of her chair when she had first come to school, back when he had a silly haircut and everything made sense.

“I am sorry to be holding lectures and making you do schoolwork with the present circumstances,” Professor Sinistra started. “It’s silly to be formal, as there are only six of you. I have seven in the sixth-year N.E.W.T. class. I am aware that my reputation has been damaged over the past three years by, well… more than just my dreadful homework.”

Astoria looked at her reflection in the window, because if she looked at Professor Sinistra, she might get emotional. She wanted the professor to conjure three-dimensional maps and make them glow like the night sky again… She wanted her old life back so badly…

“If by any chance you had the opportunity to read my book on dementors, you already know this, but my husband, who helped start all these problems, was what we call an Occlumens. That means he can prevent people called Legilimens, like Headmaster Dumbledore, from gathering his intentions, memories, and thoughts. He deceived me as much as he deceived everyone else. Even though this is unrelated to Astronomy, I wanted to take a moment to tell you about Legilimens. Many practitioners would scoff at the way I word this, but they can basically read minds. This is traditionally considered a Dark art, though it is not necessarily so. For example, it would be a helpful feat of an Auror as well. In addition to Tom Riddle himself, there are a few Legilimens in his circle, including Rabastan Lestrange, Bellatrix Lestrange, and… well… the rest of them are dead, now, thank goodness.”

 _I killed Xavier Lofthouse_.

Professor Sinistra Summoned a small box and took off the lid.

“I have studied the effectiveness of Legilimency on sleeping persons since I was in school. A Legilimens may easily invade one’s mind overnight, even if the victim is able to use Occlumency whilst awake. As with normal Legilimency, in most cases, the caster must be in the same room as you. However, there are two practitioners who can do this remotely, Riddle and Rabastan. I have found that these trinkets have hindered their ability to target the sleeping.”

The professor tilted the box she held to reveal many small nazars and hamsas, which were copies of those that cluttered her own house. Astoria was struck with a horrid realisation: the professor had been adding nonsense rooms to her house to hinder the flow of remote Legilimency. Astoria had learned how to do the spell in person less than a year ago, and what once had made her feel powerful now felt insignificant in comparison to what Voldemort and Rabastan were doing.

“Presently, they have little interest in making the effort against Hogwarts, but it is best to be proactive. They may get desperate and assume you have information about Harry Potter. These charms may seem old-fashioned in light of defensive magic developments, but they are easy to use and protect locations well. Hang these in your dormitories.”

Professor Sinistra gave each student a handful of assorted eye trinkets.

“Montel got a whole bunch last night and gave me some,” Tracey mentioned to Theodore, who took plenty.

“Did Flora get some already?” Astoria asked Professor Sinistra.

“I gave them to her on Tuesday night. Did she not hang them up?”

“No.”

“Ah, she must think she’s above this level of magic. Here, take a bunch, and be sure to nag her.”

“Trust me, professor, I will,” Astoria said.

Draco didn’t hold his hand out, so Professor Sinistra set some in front of him. Everyone started chattering and holding up their talismans to the lights. Astoria heard her name being called by Swati.

“Yes?”

“I wanted to say I’m sorry about your family,” Swati said. “Er, erm, is Asenath…?”

“Asenath survived the attack and left the country with our family. Her father and brother were killed,” Astoria said carefully, but she didn’t like how short and sweet she had made it sound.

Anthony, one of Daphne’s exes (but not one of the many who had ended in a bad fight), was also paying close attention. However, he seemed too shy to ask, so Astoria added, “My sister Splinched her arm, but also made it out with the family.”

The Ravenclaws relaxed their posture. Astoria guessed any real news about her family hadn’t travelled far on account of her screaming it at the top of her lungs. Swati and Anthony likely had questions about Astoria and Draco, but decided they had better not ask. Professor Sinistra started class, and Astoria sunk into whatever enjoyment she could. After class ended and everyone else left, she noticed that Draco wasn’t taking the talismans the professor had given him. Professor Sinistra noticed it, too.

“Mister Malfoy, please take the amulets, even if you don’t hang them.”

“Theodore and I are in the same room, and he has some. I also had to sleep in the same house as Rabastan and figured out, you know, how not to die,” Draco responded. “Save them for someone else who needs them.”

“My container refills itself, so there is no shortage,” Professor Sinistra said. “I’ll have you know that Rabastan simply got bored with you. He could crack you in your sleep if he felt the need.”

“Professor, look, I’ve got Occlumency and defensive magic under control.”

“Draco Malfoy, quit trying to act tough in front of Astoria, and take a damn hamsa! You’re seventeen.”

Draco scowled and stuffed one in his pocket.

“It can’t hurt,” Astoria said to him, and thanked the professor.

On the way down the spiral staircase, Draco once again tried to persuade Astoria to get some sleep instead of setting her alarm to cast a Patronus. He claimed that he had the situation under control and that she was only making an already horrible year even worse for herself. He noted it would be midnight by the time they even got to the common room.

“It makes me feel better, Draco. If I _can_ do something, I will. You said that to me.”

Draco shook his head.

“You’re the most stubborn person I know,” he said.

“Haven’t you looked in a mirror before?” she returned, and Draco chased her down the rest of the hall over that comment.

As difficult as it was, Astoria developed something of a routine over the next few weeks and did her best to stay out of trouble. One sunny Friday morning, when she was at breakfast, she smelled smoke. She quickly scanned the area for any source of danger, remembering the time the Great Hall had been filled with the Weasleys’ exploding fireworks and Catherine wheels. All of the smoke this time, though, came down to one red envelope. Professor Sinistra had received a Howler without any chance to react. It was from Rabastan Lestrange, and it said things that would wrench Astoria’s stomach for years to come.


	15. Evacuees

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For this chapter, we rewind the timeline a bit to check on a certain witch...  
> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 15 - "Bomb" by Bush

The wizards wore no hats unless they were part of the Order of Merlin. The witches’ hats came in all shapes and sizes, with black veils attached. Rhiannon pinched her veil by the top and tried to adjust it. It was hard to see where she was walking through the lacy flower pattern. What a silly invention.

The joint funeral of Astoria, Faunus, Renshaw, and Gracie Greengrass and Bob Page was being held in St Bromundt’s Wizarding Episcopal Church in Boston, Massachusetts. Rhiannon and the extended Greengrass family were living in a Muggle-proof mansion in the heart of the city, built in 1897 by a now-extinct pureblood family. The funeral and the church were as elaborate as the house. The only body they had, though, was Faunus’s. Renshaw and Gracie’s wedding portrait sat at the centre of their shrine. The family had no pictures of her grandfather and had his name on a placard instead. Rhiannon’s eyes were stuck on the portrait of Astoria, a bit younger than Rhiannon had ever known her. Though she was wearing that hairstyle with the goofy ringlets that Rhiannon recognised. And her green eyes and crooked smile looked the same as always. None of the portraits moved; apparently the Greengrasses didn’t “believe in that.” Rhiannon would have given anything to talk to even a little painted version of Astoria, though.

The funeral ceremony was extremely long and involved a lot of standing, kneeling, bowing, praying, singing, and other things Rhiannon always seemed to miss the cue for. She tried to copy Daphne, who seemed to know what to do through muscle memory even though her eyes were shut and she sobbed the whole time. Rhiannon wondered why she wasn’t crying herself. She was definitely in grief and pain. Maybe it was because she had cried so much already. Maybe it was because there were so many rituals she had to pay attention to. Astoria would understand.

There was a part in the ceremony where everyone had to join hands. Rhiannon was on the side of Daphne’s Splinch, though, so she put her hand just behind Daphne’s shoulder and tried to comfort her. Daphne had been wearing billowing robes and shawls to try to hide her amputation. She wasn’t the only one whose injuries could not be remedied; Faunus’s wife, Elly was in a magical wheelchair, and cousin Sofronia Kippling was now blind. Rhiannon wished Astoria had made it out, even if she had injuries. Anything would be better than this. They couldn’t even recover the pieces of her body.

Some member of the extended family gave a eulogy for each decedent. Rhiannon had never met him before. He must have been chosen because no closer loved one was able to speak. Rhiannon was not able to pay attention to him; he used a lot of words she didn’t know, and it all seemed a bit generic, anyway. The Greengrasses usually buried, but they were no longer on home soil. Faunus was therefore cremated and interred in a fancy-looking vase with golden runes on it, and given to his wife. Everyone took the Floo network back to the new house, where Rhiannon went through Astoria’s favourite astronomy stuff. Astoria would have hated it in the city; every night was completely starless.

~

Rhiannon was only glad to go to school to get away from Astoria’s parents, whose marriage was getting rocky. Rhiannon, like Astoria’s mum, was also disgusted with Adam Greengrass for prioritising the Ministry’s O.W.L.s, transferring his fortune to a new bank, and shipping their belongings over their safety. These days, Adam was known to spend entire days with his head on his desk in his study, unable to move. He grew thin without her.

In September, Rhiannon and Astoria’s school-age cousins went to Ilvermorny. It was an expansive castle roughly the same physical size as Hogwarts, but it was full, and there were multiple teachers for the same subject. She had been Sorted into a House called Wampus, which was like beefed-up Gryffindor. It had a wampus cat as its mascot, which made perfect sense, as she still thought Gryffindor should have had a griffin. Rhiannon’s ex-girlfriend, Asenath Greengrass, had been a Hogwarts Gryffindor and was also Sorted into Wampus. Adamina went to Horned Serpent, which was like the goth version of Ravenclaw, but Sofronia went to Thunderbird, which was basically a nicer, sweeter Slytherin. No one expected Daphne to end up in hardcore Hufflepuff (a.k.a. Pukwudgie), but she did even though she couldn’t pronounce it. Rhiannon knew Astoria would have ended up in Thunderbird. They were oddballs who liked old maps and flower-language and ghosts. Rhiannon sometimes entertained the thought that Astoria might become a ghost like the one in Quennell Park. It’d be even better if she kept Moaning Myrtle company, and Hestia if she was still in school…

Maybe Rhiannon was grasping at straws.

America was a bit strange, since the people were very “Freedom this” and “Potato salad that,” but Rhiannon guessed it was all right. Daphne introduced her cousins to Sally-Anne Perks, who had transferred here from Hogwarts after her fourth-year due to the Ministry no longer giving her grants for textbooks. Sally-Anne was pretty helpful in showing them round the school. They each got a handful of pamphlets upon arrival, like “Our Mission,” “Castle Map,” “Amenities,” and “Counseling Services.” In spite of what seemed like a service-filled school, Daphne and Sofronia were both in limbo with the accommodations office; they needed to give all of their teachers approved accommodation slips that had not been _processed_ yet. Rhiannon couldn’t imagine what the holdup was. It was obvious Sofronia couldn’t see, and it wasn’t like Daphne was going to grow her arm back like a starfish.

The girls were waiting in the Dining Hall for their schedules. Even though she didn’t want to, Rhiannon ended up taking Astronomy because she got an E on the O.W.L., and Astoria would be so sad if she didn’t. In America, O.W.L.s were still called O.W.L.s, but “Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests” was putting it much too frankly, so they called them “E.W.E.s” and “E.W.E. classes,” which stood for Examinations for Wizarding Employment. When Rhiannon’s schedule appeared before her, she was utterly thrown.

> Pd. 1 - Apotropaics 600-02
> 
> Pd. 2 - Herbology and Brewing 600-02
> 
> Pd. 3 - Spellcasting 600-02
> 
> Pd. 4 - Magizoology 400-02
> 
> Pd. 5 - No-Maj Relations and Culture 400-02
> 
> Pd. 6 - Apparition 100-02
> 
> Pd. 10 - Astronomy 600-02

More than confused, Rhiannon took a peek at Daphne’s schedule. On account of her O.W.L. scores, she didn’t have much going on, but it was still baffling.

> Pd. 1 - Arithmancy 500-03
> 
> Pd. 5 - Spellcasting 700-03
> 
> Pd. 7 - Divining and Dowsing 500-03

Only when she looked at Asenath’s schedule did anything start to make sense. It seemed like “-02” meant Wampus, and “-03” meant Pukwudgie. That was about all she could gather.

“Am I in fourth-year Magical Creatures? I thought our credits transferred!” Rhiannon exclaimed, startled by Magizoology 400-02.

“No, silly!” Sally-Anne said. “It’s because it’s your fourth year taking it. The highest level of electives is 500. They’re numbered based on the year and house, that’s all.”

Rhiannon was still flustered. Asenath’s “Runology” class was clearly Study of Ancient Runes, but Rhiannon didn’t have that anyway. Why was Potions called “Brewing” and lumped together with Herbology? They weren’t the same! Hestia would have cried! And what were Apotropaics and Spellcasting supposed to be? Why did she have the same classes every single day of the week? This would be terrible!

“Spellcasting is Charms, right Sally-Anne?” guessed Asenath.

“Yes, and Apotropaics is D.A.D.A. ‘No-Maj’ is what they call Muggles, and er, Transfiguration’s the same. I think that’s about it as far as the classes go,” said Sally-Anne.

“Right, right, but do you think they’ll at least know what I’m saying if I say Charms instead of ‘ _Spellcasting six-hundred O-two_?’” Rhiannon asked.

“I don’t think they’re going to understand what you say either way, Rhi,” Asenath shrugged.

Asenath was right. Sometimes it really felt like everyone was speaking a different language. (Who would have thought “biscuits and gravy” was something remotely edible?) Rhiannon got lost as she was looking for her first class and fumbled with the folded map. After having only confused herself more, she figured she’d try the easier way and ask the nearest Prefect –– no, wait, “Castle Assistant.”

“Hi, hello, erm, can you tell me where, er, sixth-year Wampus Apotropaics is?”

“Huh? Apotropaics?” the C.A. struggled to understand her accent.

“Yeah, sorry. I’m lost.”

“E.W.E. Apotropaics for Wampus is on the first floor. You’re one floor up. Go down to the first floor, and it’s room 190.”

As far as Rhiannon was concerned, she _was_ on the first floor. She thought a staircase must have switched on her until she discovered that her class was actually on the _ground floor_. How confusing! Americans really called the first floor the second floor. At least there weren’t any dungeons she’d have to navigate at Ilvermorny. They’d probably call those “the spelunking rooms” or something.

Other than the floor level fiasco, Sally-Anne did a nice job orienting everyone to their new school. In her severe grief, Daphne seemed thankful to meet up with an old friend again. Daphne never once insinuated that Rhiannon had attracted the Death Eaters to Quennell Park by being Muggle-born. Perhaps her baby sister had taught her something after all. Rhiannon, though, lived with guilt every day as she remembered the times Astoria had been by her side, stuck up for her, and comforted her.

Rhiannon hoped that the dead really went up to the sky like lots of people believed, so that Astoria could see all the stars and planets from amazing new angles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I aimed to utilise information about Ilvermorny without the [highly problematic settlers' lore](https://finding-my-culture.tumblr.com/post/185399043435/do-you-know-anything-about-the-harry-potter) that went into the original writings. Learning about why the storytelling regarding Ilvermorny was so darn bad was an eye-opening experience! So for my story I was aiming for "sometimes a school is just a school." (And also a hefty dash of "J.K., _stand back_ ").


	16. Dumbledore's Army

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Allhallowtide!👻👻 I had a BLAST with this chapter. (If you couldn't tell... it is so long oops).
> 
> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 16 - "First Love / Late Spring" by Mitski
> 
>  **Content warnings:** Self-harm, trauma bonding, and um? pictures of butts

“You’re certain you want to do this.”

Astoria nodded. She and Draco were standing in the Astronomy library. Astoria had charmed the statues of putti to fly all over the room. Draco had placed protective enchantments over the bookshelves and scroll collections.

“I’ve cast darker things before,” Astoria said aloud yet again, having hesitated for what she felt was too long.

Draco took her hand and asked, “When you were little, did you ever play with a balloon by trying to keep it in the air?”

It was a farfetched question.

“Er, yeah?” she responded.

“Did you ever try it with more than one balloon, perhaps at a party?” he asked.

“Erm, I think so… What’s that got to do with curses?”

“Dark magic feels like trying to keep several balloons in the air,” Draco said. “It’s not as hard as juggling, since they’re full of air, but it takes all of your attention. You really have to mean it and exert control.”

He had a much nicer way of putting it than Flora, who had made the whole thing sound akin to dragon taming.

“Draco, I’ve had to _mean_ it when I conjured confetti or made a feather float. I’m fairly certain I’ll know what to do.”

“Well, you haven’t done it yet.”

“Well, you were asking me if I was sure I wanted to. It made me think you weren’t ready. Are _you_ ready, in case this gets out of hand?” she asked.

“I’ve been ready!”

“All right, all right.”

Astoria tapped her wand to her side and raised it at the statues. She broadened her stance and gripped her wand tight. She breathed deeply.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“ _Syssorevounlitho_.”

Suddenly, three statues crashed into each other repeatedly until they had ground themselves into bits. Still more statues violently bashed themselves into the centre, breaking into pieces and making a larger stone. Astoria kept her wand in place until the last putto had been destroyed in the amalgamation. The boulder was already trying to get away from her and smash against the walls, but Astoria kept her focus and lowered it carefully. Professor Sinistra would kill her before this boulder did if the room was destroyed. Once on the floor, the boulder made every effort against Astoria to move of its own accord, but she kept control, learning how to move it in the direction she wanted. She could tell how much heavier the rock was. It was definitely more than just a sum of its parts, which reminded her of the increasingly-heavy _Blood Magick_ text she’d had to return. She could crush a lot of limbs with this thing, including her own. Without her wand on it at all times, it was an indiscriminate weapon. She rolled the boulder all over the floor until she got used to it.

“My arm’s tired now. Are you ready to cast a Shield?” she announced.

“Sure. _Protego_ ,” Draco said.

Astoria had to relinquish control over the curse in order to cast another spell to stop it, which was the worst part. She had only a split second, which was why the enchantments and Shield were necessary. The moment she let it go, the boudler started speeding up.

“ _Reducto!_ ” she shouted, and the boulder burst into tiny, inert pebbles.

She stared at the remnants for a moment.

“Draco, I did it!”

“You did!”

“Draco, I really did it! I used the Arts!”

“I know, I was right here!” he laughed.

Astoria fiddled with her hands excitedly. Then she Vanished the mess she had made. She and Draco tried to conjure more putto statues on account of the damage to them being irreparable. No one needed to know.

“Wait, Draco, yours are so lopsided!”

“No they aren’t –– oh.”

Draco compared his side of the room to hers and realised the problem. It turns out he wasn’t very good at making the putti look sweet and angelic; they looked like adult faces on babies’ bodies. He tried again with more luck the second time, using Astoria’s as references. Astoria flipped a few pages forward in her grimoire, and found the shield spell that she had seen both Theodore and her mother cast. When Theodore had cast this spell, even violent curses from other Slytherins were not able to crack it. He had done it to keep everyone in the common room when Death Eaters stormed the castle. When her mother had cast it, a monstrous form of a dragon had sprung out of its exterior and killed an attacking Death Eater. After consulting with Theodore, she discovered the incantation was _Protego Nidhogg_ and had been created by the Nott family, but eventually spread to Dark practitioners all over Europe. Theodore, as a member of the Nott family, had “permitted” Astoria to use it (she would have anyway), though he cautioned that controlling it was “almost as bad as Atmospheric Charms.” He warned that the dragons that came out of it always aimed to kill unless directed otherwise and that he, for one, never let them spring forth from the shield in the first place. Astoria remembered seeing her mother strain from using it and approached the spell carefully. Fortunately, it never hurt the people on the inside of the shield apart from making them sore and winded.

“I’m going to cast Theodore’s spell,” she announced.

Draco became a bit fussy at her wording.

“Well, it isn’t _Theodore_ ’ _s_ spell. He didn’t make it. I can use it.”

“Hopefully, I can too. Are the enchantments still steady? Is the door triple-locked?”

“Yes and yes,” he said.

“Good. Stand right next to me, please.”

Astoria could think of a thousand good ways to use this spell. It would take a lot out of her body to cast something so grand, so she used mental imagery to prepare herself. The Dark arts were like a perverse Patronus Charm. Her intent had to be sincere, and the memories of why she was pursuing such a thing had to be clear. She recalled Flora being forced to cast curses on their friend Montel, the wimpy Curtis Evercreech, and their new roommate Alexa. Amycus always picked Flora. Word had spread about her; it seemed that only the people within their class (that is, the ones actually getting cursed) knew that she had no choice. Astoria’s anger bubbled. She envisioned the children who had been cut up by the Carrows, lying in the hospital beds. This had been going on for a month. She heard Rabastan’s Howler screeching in her head.

“ _PROTEGO NIDHOGG_!”

The Shield felt like it was coming out of her whole arm rather than the end of her wand. The muscles in her wrist involuntarily contorted as the spell gained momentum and discharged out like black ink in water. Then the magic began to rotate until she and Draco were entirely surrounded by the dome. She felt like she had pulled her carpal tunnel already, and her fingers were twitching. The Shield’s motion created loud wind. She didn’t remember that happening when Theodore had cast it and gathered herself together to make sure no dragons came out.

“I can’t tell what you’re trying to do! Do you want the full spell or no?” Draco asked.

“No!”

“Don’t freak out, but I think you might be losing this one! Better stop!”

Astoria was about to take his advice when she felt her arm wrenched sideways by the force of the spell. Another layer of black had emerged, spiralling out from the bottom. It came to a monster’s head at the top.

“Astoria, you can let this one go! Nothing bad happens when you release it! It’s only doing this because you’re keeping your wand up!”

Astoria didn’t respond. She admitted that she had temporarily lost her hold, but once she had seen the creature’s maw open as it circled round the shield in search of prey, she became fascinated. She was really capable of making this. Merely saying the words and pointing one’s wand didn’t make this happen. Would her mother be proud? Had she finally lived up to the Greengrass name? Well, at least Rhiannon would think it was cool if she were here.

This Shield wasn’t as strenuous as moving clouds up in the sky. She simply had to pay attention. She followed the outline of the dragon’s body with her wand until she found its head and snared it with twofold the magic. With a gritty scream, she sent the dragon forth and tested how far it would go in the room. It fought her like a dog running on a leash, but she held the spell tight and whipped the monster back and forth against the enchantments in the room before bringing it back. Somehow, this wand that had been too much for her in the past was now _not enough_. Even though it was unnecessary to release the spell, Astoria coiled the dragon back over the dome of the Shield beforehand simply to practise controlling it. Then the whole spell dissipated. She heaved and stumbled over to the nearest telescope stool, which was actually not so near. Draco was bustling all over the place checking for damage. There wasn’t any. Astoria already knew.

“Holy salamanders, Astoria. How did you –– Where did that –– Where did you learn to do that‽”

“Alecto called my magic diffuse,” she breathed.

“W-Well, she’s wrong!”

Astoria Summoned her grimoire and took notes on her experience, writing with a thick nib over the maps and pictures already in the book. Draco was massaging her back as though she had been in a Muggle-style fight. She had no pain, but that didn’t mean she didn’t need this.

“Are you doing well?” he asked.

“A little lower, Draco. I’m a bit worn,” she fibbed.

“Oh. That’s understandable. You’re not used to it.”

“My wand is already.”

“Mine protests with Dark magic. You have a dragon’s core, though. Mine’s unicorn. That must be why.”

“Mm,” she said, setting her head on the table as he continued to rub her back.

The ink from her notes was taking a long time to dry, and she zoned out watching it. Lamentably, if they wanted food, they’d have to go to dinner now. When they approached the door to unlock it, they saw two little noses against the leaded glass. Astoria’s entire body felt like it’d shrivel from embarrassment. She opened the door and found first-years Chesna Borgin and Sedecla Burke, both with dropped jaws.

“What do you two think you’re––” Draco started, but Astoria stopped him and swiftly gathered her composure.

“First years have access to this room so they can borrow the large maps, remember? They’re learning the constellations for the first time,” she said. “How are you girls?”

“Er, erm, er, er…” Chesna said.

“You’re not supposed to be doing that in here!” Sedecla piped at Astoria, putting her hands on her hips. “In fact, you’re not supposed to be doing that at all!”

“Ah, you girls saw my spell?”

“Er, er…” Chesna said.

“We rightly did! We’re telling on you to Professor Sinistra!” threatened Sedecla.

Draco was going to say something again, but Astoria flicked her hand at him.

“You are, are you? What will you say?”

“I won’t say a thing,” Chesna said, and Sedecla gave her a mean look.

“I’m going to tell her you were using Dark magic in the library!”

“I was? I suppose I shouldn’t have,” Astoria said.

“No!”

“Where should I have done it?” she teased.

“What? Nowhere!” Sedecla said.

“What sorts of things do your parents sell at their shop, Sedecla?”

“Er… Well, they, er…”

“They sell Dark things, don’t they?”

“I don’t know, maybe! So what if they do!” Sedecla smarted.

“Well, Amycus and Alecto Carrow like to buy and trade things at that shop. In fact, I heard that the owners of the shop let them use a certain Vanishing Cabinet to come attack Dumbledore… And don’t you sometimes sneak in there together and mess with the items your parents tell you not to touch? I wonder if Professor Sinistra should know about that, too. I heard she’s very eager to give bad students extra homework.”

Sedecla looked horrified at the prospect of more star charts. Chesna was sweating clear through her robes.

“Fine, I won’t say anything if you don’t!” Sedecla compromised.

“You won’t say anything anyway. You don’t remember my name,” Astoria grinned.

“H-Hey! Hey!” Sedecla protested, but Astoria and Draco scooted past the girls.

“The maps you’re looking for are in shelf B14,” Astoria said, and the girls ran into the room away from her.

“I _cannot_ believe you,” Draco laughed.

“Oh, what I did was nothing. You were going to yell at them and make them cry!”

“I was not!”

“You were! You _buy_ from their families’ shop––”

“Whoa there!”

“––and you were going to yell at them, poor things!”

“You’re full of it,” he said, stealing a kiss, and Astoria stole several more.

“ _Ahem_. Malfoy.”

One of the patrolling Death Eaters was crossing their path.

“Selwyn,” Draco said with a nod.

Astoria unwrapped her arms from Draco and looked away until the Death Eater meandered onward. She remembered Rhiannon and Hestia complaining about this sort of thing whenever it used to be Aurors who patrolled the castle.

“Is that your greeting, you nod at each other?” Astoria teased, as she was in a surprisingly elated mood after her success. “No secret Death Eater handshake?”

“Stop it,” Draco said, rolling his eyes.

They talked about their “normal” classes on the trip back and complained about Professor McGonagall setting the same amount of homework regardless of the national calamity. As they were passing through the basement, they came across a large message written on the wall.

**DUMBLEDORE’S ARMY, STILL RECRUITING**

Cute. What a bad time to be holding that D.A.D.A. club. Astoria remembered Rhiannon having no luck with getting accepted into that club since she was Slytherin, and she could only imagine that Slytherins were their outright enemy now. Draco was muttering unpleasant things; he quickly grabbed Astoria by the arm and led her onward.

“Draco, you’re going to make me trip down the stairs. Let go of me.”

“Then move faster,” he said brusquely, freeing her arm. “They can’t know I’m the first one who saw it. I’m hoping someone else catches it before my shift. I don’t want to be the one to deal with that.”

Astoria knew that Dumbledore’s Army members had been the ones to hex Draco on the train for two consecutive years (she had helped fix him), but he would have been forced to do much worse to them in return.

“Why don’t we go back and remove it, then? That way everyone wins.”

“It’s hexed, Astoria. Can’t you tell?”

 _No I can’t_ , Astoria thought with humiliation.

She trotted alongside of him until they reached the common room. Seeing that graffiti had ruined Draco’s mood. It wasn’t the vandalism itself, nor was it the message, but the memories of having to cast the Cruciatus Curse.

“I think I’m going to go to the dorm. I’ll see you later.”

He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her into a quick sideways kiss. She wanted to squeeze him tighter, but the angle wouldn’t let her. Draco knew that she would be there for him if he needed to talk. Astoria knew that he wouldn’t want to.

On Wednesday, Astoria wondered how Draco was doing with Amycus’s class whilst she was stuck in Alecto’s. Cleverly, Alecto had not given them a required textbook. All of the books on blood purity were old and stuffy, and she wanted to appeal to fresh meat. Thus, she gave the students “readings” in each class that either directly endorsed blood purity or surreptitiously insulted Muggle society. Astoria, like most students, pretended to read them and then willingly failed the quizzes. Astoria’s current standing in the class was “failing.” The reading that day, though, had actually caught her attention due to the title “Gender in Muggle Society.” There was a painting of a witch riding a black winged horse stark naked by Edward Hughes, a painting of another nude witch standing above an apparently dying animal called “Love Magic,” and an abusive painting of naked witches, hags, Inferi, goats, bats, and Thestrals entitled “Witches Going to Their Sabbath.” The next page depicted hags with warty noses, bare breasts, and screaming children. The text nearest the pictures read:-

> “Witch” and “crone” are used as insults, whilst the equivalent “wizard” and “warlock” are not. “Wizard,” in fact, may be used as a compliment, such as in “He’s a maths wizard” (i.e., “He is skilled at maths.”)
> 
> Muggles have entirely conflated witches with hags, using images of them as Hallowe’en costumes and decorations. Tradition states that witches are cannibals who prey upon Muggle infants. Other stories detail witches stealing children from their parents, sometimes leaving a monstrous “changeling” in their place. When not depicted as hags, witches are most frequently portrayed as nude goat-worshippers, symbols of lust, and evil temptresses of Muggle men ( _shown here_ ).
> 
> __

_Ew_. That wasn’t much better than being objectified by the pureblood system, was it? Alecto was a fraud (and not to mention, she was sort of a child-stealer herself), but those paintings were real and spanned across history.

There were worse things about Muggles and gender in that pamphlet than paintings. The Death Eaters were all wrong, but perhaps there was some worth in not _marrying_ Muggles –– that didn’t mean anything had to be violent. Muggle-borns shouldn’t be lumped in with this sort of thing, anyway. Astoria was very frustrated, though, when she discovered she had aced that day’s quiz. Alecto was so excited that Astoria felt like retaking it just to fail.

Astoria and Flora were scratching their heads over N.E.W.T. Arithmancy when Draco showed himself that afternoon. He had no classes that day and was not in his uniform, but a sleek black button-down with a faint paisley pattern. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows –– how Astoria was ever going to get back to Arithmancy, she didn’t know.

“Would you two believe there are still Hogsmeade trips?”

“Hogsmeade trips?” Astoria uttered. She had nearly forgotten what those were. On top of all the other rules, they weren’t even allowed out on the grounds, and now the weather had turned cold. Flora was intent on finishing a formula before acknowledging that Draco had arrived, and when she reached the solution, she said, “They are trying to give us a false sense of security. Students haven’t exactly reacted to being dictated with overflowing pleasure.”

“Theodore just hung up the sign, and I couldn’t believe it. It’s on the eleventh,” Draco said.

Astoria did not immediately react to the hint. All of her memories of school trips to Hogsmeade involved Rhiannon, Pariah, the W.W.N. building, and full bags from Honeydukes. It wasn’t going to be anything like a Hogsmeade trip without the music or her best friend. In their place were dementors and Death Eater guards. Flora had to be thinking it, too, since she wasn’t showing the slightest trace of excitement. She dipped her quill again and kept on with Arithmancy.

“I know it’s not the best circumstance, Astoria, but I’d like to take you on a proper date,” Draco said sincerely.

That’s right… they had never been on an official date together. They had had to hide their relationship the previous year for the sake of safety. So much for that notion. Not a _word_ had come down from above chastising Draco for affiliating with a Greengrass now. How bashful they had once been when they had danced at her family’s Christmas banquet. How young.

“I would like that, Draco,” she said, touching the hand he had set on their table.

Why couldn’t she ever have him without the world crashing down around them? It was always something. Draco played with her fingers absentmindedly but didn’t take a seat.

“Flora, I think you should go. Well, not on our date,” he joked, “but if you stay in the castle, you’ll get cabin fever.”

“I’m inoculated,” Flora grunted.

“Well, depending on how Snape feels about the freedom, this might be the only trip we have,” Draco said.

Flora shot a look at him that had “I’m still not your friend” written all over it. Where Astoria had been quite charmed by the look Draco had going on, Flora’s eyes followed his revealed Dark Mark. He always kept it covered –– it snapped Astoria back. Her mind, prone to this sort of thinking, shuffled through three scenarios. Was it an absentminded move because he was warm in the common room? Was it possible that he wanted to _show off_ his Dark Mark? Worst of all, was the Mark burning and hurting him, twisting with the demands of Voldemort?

Oh. He had simply been warm. Draco noticed Flora’s dirty look and tried to roll down his sleeves casually, though he looked distressed that the Mark was currently dark enough to be so noticeable. Astoria hadn’t really thought he wanted to show that thing off; it had been her anxiety talking, but she felt badly for thinking it. It was just that Draco Malfoy used to be that kind of person.

Flora might not have been friendly with Draco; however, she was friends with Montel Davis and her own sister, so she later told Astoria that she would go on the Hogsmeade trip. Astoria hoped for the best for everyone, as she had a creeping feeling there was some ulterior motive to allowing the trip. Her fears were, for once, unfounded. Apart from the obvious patrol of Death Eaters round the village’s parameters, there wasn’t much amiss. The dementors were swirling alongside the foot of the mountains, sure to catch Harry Potter if he was mad enough to arrive here, but otherwise unobtrusive. Draco was practically on air due to the change in environment. Knowing Draco, Astoria fully expected him to take her to dinner and spend an unruly amount of money, but the first thing he did was lead her to a spot under a huge oak tree. It was cool and shady beneath the arc of branches, but the sun dabbled on the red-orange leaves. She thought she would conjure a nice park bench, but Draco beat her to something else. A thick fleece blanket fell gently over the grass. When he sat down, he held out his hand to her. She couldn’t help but indulge. Draco leaned against the tree trunk, and she leaned her back against him. He kissed her head and poked his nose against her ear to try to tickle her.

“Your hair smells nice.”

“It’s Hestia’s shampoo I’m using now. I’ll tell her you’re enthralled.”

“You’re in no position to tease me. You think I don’t remember where you’re ticklish?” he said, loosening the hold on her belly to put his hands right at the bend in her waist.

“AH! Don’t!”

“What was that?” he threatened light-heartedly.

Astoria seized his hands before they could misbehave, but he nuzzled her neck so spiritedly that she nearly toppled sideways.

“Hm, I’ve found a new spot,” Draco said.

“You have not –– hey!” she flailed.

Draco hoisted her back upright and didn’t torment her anymore. She leaned back again and took his hands in hers over the _non-ticklish_ part of her stomach. The smell of autumn was everywhere, from the early-fallen leaves to the aromatic pines in the forest. Firewood smoke came from a few of the houses. She was so glad they had lucked out with nice weather and admired the blue sky. Off in the distance, there was a curved ring of mismatched clouds. So it hadn’t been luck.

“Do you see the way those clouds look over there?” she conversed. “Those have been altered with Atmospheric Charms. Professor Sinistra must have worked all morning on that for us to have fair skies. Yet everyone is afraid of her.”

“I happen to like her _and_ be afraid of her,” Draco said, admiring the cloud forms. “Oh, you got a leaf in your hair.”

“That’s better than an insect.”

“Really, your hair does smell nice. What am I supposed to do if Amortentia starts smelling like this to me?”

“Hestia’s only into women, so you’re fresh out of luck.”

“You know I discovered what that potion smells like to me last year.”

“You’re going to say it smells like me, aren’t you? That’s corny,” Astoria grinned.

“What would you rather me say? It smells like your pheromones?” Draco cackled.

“Oh, Merlin, no,” she said. “Well, mine smells like a summer’s night air, and then melted chocolate, and then that Hallgraves Essence cologne you used to wear utterly too much of.”

“Oh, I see how it is,” Draco said. “How’d you know the brand? I sure hope I don’t smell like someone else you know.”

“I always sniff the samples in magazines,” Astoria admitted.

“Well, then there’s no proof it was me you smelled in Amortentia. You could have subconsciously desired one of those shirtless models on the cologne adverts.”

“I’m certain it was you,” Astoria said.

“Well, I smelt fresh fruit, and a large dinner roast, and Quennell Park, believe it or not,” he said.

Astoria hadn’t expected to feel so relieved to hear the words “Quennell Park” outside the context of the attack. It was her proof that it was still out there, still real. She had done some wild things to save it, even though its sanctity had been a lie.

“What does Quennell Park smell like to you? You’ve only been there once.”

“It smells… sort of like a very rich pine… Well, the fire logs burning here in the village almost make me think of it, but it’s not quite… It’s like a homey cabin scent. Rain through an open window, maybe. Or an earthy garden-y sort of scent. I’m not sure. You always had it on your clothes, like you had brought the smell with your luggage.”

“Oh,” Astoria smiled placidly, “I suppose it’s all those things.”

Draco sensed her bittersweet grief, and continued to ask her about all the little things at her estate. She told him of all the best stargazing spots, the beautiful upper levels he hadn’t seen, the library, her boudoir grand piano, the stables, the land. Everything.

Everything was empty.

Draco rested his chin on her shoulder and sighed. He always gripped the helm of his Occlumency, but every now and then, a reticent but burning something-or-other would trace along the brim of Astoria’s cognizance. Astoria had no idea what exactly he thought; she wasn’t even facing him, much less casting anything, but she felt pressed to tease him.

“Oh goodness, Draco,” she faked a gasp.

Draco’s dreamy grey eyes lit, and she felt him jolt just a tiny bit.

“Ha! Did you really pick up on that?”

 _I wish_.

“Not the details,” she feinted harmlessly.

She craned her neck back a tad more to catch his lips. He dove so fervently on the opportunity that Astoria forgot it was chilly out.

Draco did end up taking her somewhere to eat (they had to smarten themselves up after snogging before going anywhere), but it wasn’t the tacky teahouse she expected. Astoria had never noticed that the upper level of Tomes and Scrolls Bookshop had a café; it turned out that was because the owners had recently opened it. They didn’t have many customers for the café on account of their ill-timed business venture, so it made for a private environment. The thick smell of coffee was invigorating and relaxing at the same time. The chairs were all mismatched and very soft. Smooth piano music played quietly to fit the atmosphere of both the café and the bookshop below. It was rustic and bare-boned and wasn’t a place either of them would call nice, but it served such a nice purpose that they forgot some of their table manners as they grew deeper and deeper into conversation. A solitary cuckoo clock was their only hint of the passage of time, and Astoria was reluctant to hint to Draco that he had the remnants of a marshmallow Carriage Wheel at the corner of his mouth after their modest meal.

They stocked up on more sweets at Honeydukes. Astoria was excited to find jars of comb-in honey from the end of the bee season. Draco bought her the remaining stock so that Slughorn wouldn’t use them to trick her into coming to more of his club’s parties. He also supplied her with sugared violets, crystallised pineapple, rose lokum, and spearmint gummies. She was so overcome that she nearly said “I’ll pay you back” before remembering that Draco was too rich for his own good, and that she had absolutely no money in Gringotts. Was this how Rhiannon had felt on Hogsmeade trips before getting royalties from the record company? Because this was very humbling.

“You eat gross sweets,” Draco smiled, scrunching his nose at her confectionaries whilst he bought himself chocolate creams and a box of Dragon Claws.

“Don’t you want to try a sugared violet?”

“I might as well go outside and eat a leaf, Astoria. Thanks, though.”

They walked by Dominic Maestro’s, and Astoria took a moment to peek in the windows. Shining brass instruments floated above percussion instruments charmed to play themselves. In a whisper, Astoria told Draco all about how Pariah had started on the second floor of that shop. He told her his mother had wanted him to learn the clarinet, but he never cooperated. That sounded like him. Before curfew was called, Hestia and Montel crashed their date, running up behind them with a stack of colourful boxes.

“We got hot air balloons,” said Montel.

“From where?” Astoria asked. However, Draco was more concerned that Montel and Hestia’s arrest was imminent, and asked, “ _How large_?”

“They’re only yea high,” Montel indicated with his hands. “Turns out the back of the old Zonko’s has a storage shack they didn’t clean out! Stuff’s just sitting in there getting water damage, so we broke into it with some Hufflepuffs on watch duty. We’ve been handing out what we could salvage to third-years –– not everything, mind. We’ve got to have some fun, too.”

“Yeah, I put a pinwheel hat on Flora. She took it off and set it on fire,” said Hestia.

“She did not,” Astoria said.

“Oh, fine. She Transfigured it into a teensy bird, and it flew off,” admitted Hestia.

Hestia and Montel handed Astoria and Draco each a box. Draco waited until Astoria opened hers to join in. Astoria unfolded a small silk balloon. It was crazily coloured with red, green, and blue polka dots over top of big carnival stripes in purple, yellow, and orange. She followed the instructions in the box for attaching the tiny basket to the strings and setting the candle in the right spot. She and Montel had theirs ready whilst Draco and Hestia fumbled through it without reading the directions. They all waited for the magical flames they conjured to do their jobs.

“First one who Levitates it loses,” Hestia said as they continued to wait.

Montel’s took off first, followed by Astoria’s. Draco had to wait a bit longer, and Hestia’s didn’t launch.

“You lose,” Astoria said as Hestia Levitated hers to keep up.

They let them go way above their heads (though not high enough for the Ministry to panic over unauthorised aircraft), and guided them along the path. It was a simple pastime; Astoria admired how the magical flames made the patterns flash different colours. They raced them with a “no charms allowed” rule before going into the castle, and Draco’s won.

“That was nice, actually,” Draco said after Montel and Hestia gave the couple back their quality time.

“It was. Thank you for treating me to supper, by the way,” Astoria said.

“Of course.”

Since curfew was up, there wasn’t anywhere else for them to go.

“We could stay out to do curfew roundup,” Draco offered, “since I’m a… Death-Prefect… I guess.”

“Better a Death-Prefect than a Prefect Eater,” Astoria said, and they stretched out their day as much as they could.

Astoria spent too long psychoanalysing herself that night, wondering why she had warmed back up so quickly to Draco. He despised being a Death Eater, but he very much was one. How much had he grown because of this experience? Astoria felt like a completely new witch after watching the sun rise over the Sussex countryside alone. There were so many things she knew now, and she wasn’t sure Draco was able to recognise the role that prejudice had played in starting this war. She wondered what volatile combination of loneliness and hormones had led her not only to salvage their relationship but also to be quite open about it in front of others. Was it because her family wasn’t here to tell her otherwise? That she knew no one could stop her? Oh dear… Did she have some deep-seated power complex?

 _No_ , _it_ ’ _s simpler than all that_ , she thought later as she sent out her Patronus to give him some protection and company. She hadn’t missed a single night.

~

The girls had made a habit of walking together throughout the castle so they would not be lone targets of Death Eaters or Voldemort-bound students. However, they didn’t think they would have to accompany one another to the lavatory of all places. One late afternoon on their way back from the library, Astoria stopped at the first floor’s lavatory. There were plenty of other students round, so the other girls went ahead back to the dungeons. Whilst Astoria was there, she heard the door open and saw a certain pair of degraded leather boots from beneath the stall door. It was Alecto, so Astoria was more than willing to wait behind the stall door until she left.

Alecto had only come in to wash her hands, it seemed. Astoria kept an eye on her boots and heard her run the tap at full spitting pressure. The sound of Alecto’s handwashing was loud, and Astoria remembered many occasions when she herself had washed vigorously after coming into contact with fertilisers and other nasty substances in Herbology. Astoria continued waiting, but Alecto continued to scrub, and the water in the sink basin sloshed as if it were full. Maybe Alecto had been hit with a gross jinx. Served her right.

When the washing didn’t stop, Astoria debated her options. If she remained in the stall, Alecto might catch on and accuse her of spying. If she walked out to the sinks, she would have to stand right next to Alecto.

Alecto wasn’t leaving, though. Her breathing was staggered. Perhaps she was trying to clean a sore wound?

Astoria reasoned that it would be less suspicious to simply exit the stall and wash her hands than to continue hiding behind the door. With some courage, she stepped out and walked to a sink a few places down from Alecto, who didn’t react. Astoria had two conflicting instincts, one being to get out of there as soon as possible, and the other to see what was happening. She tried to do both in the same move, grabbing her bag and taking a solid look at Alecto as she turned to leave.

Alecto had the water as hot as it would get. Steam rolled up from the ceramic into her face. The sink would not drain as fast as the tap would run, and Alecto dipped her arms into the overly sudsy bowl. Her sleeves were rolled and her arms were absolutely scalded, and when Astoria saw her splash her face and neck with the burning water, she lost her ability to leave.

 _Alecto, stop_.

When Alecto realised she was being watched, she cried in a combination of mental and physical pain. She addressed Astoria not as a superior, but childishly, like a tattler.

“One of them half-bloods sneezed on me.”

A half-blood sneeze was no dirtier than a pure-blood sneeze, but Alecto was deep in ritual purification. Again, she splashed her face with dangerously hot water, which made patches on her plump cheeks. She pumped more soap into her red hands and scrubbed her neck, making her faded tattoo glisten vibrantly and the sensitive skin burn.

 _Stop_ , _Alecto_.

“D’you think I got it off?” the woman shook.

“Yes,” Astoria said to get her to end this behaviour. She walked right next to the witch and shut off the water.

Alecto had her hands on either side of the basin, letting her face drip into it as she watched the bubbles pop and the water slowly gurgle down the drain. Astoria hated seeing this vulnerability in her. She did not want to be a nice person to Alecto, but she wasn’t the type to leave broken glass on the floor, since it could cut somebody else.

“You could get Pepperup Potion from the Hospital Wing,” Astoria reminded, though Alecto had made the place full.

The comment, meant in some confused way to alleviate, gravely complicated Alecto’s decline at the sink, and she could have easily displaced Myrtle as the ear-shattering haunt. Watching Alecto sob, Astoria felt all she stood for get scrubbed, too. She had to smother her emotional response of undeserved pity, lest her very identity get washed down the drain along with Alecto’s water.

“I just meant if you catch cold,” Astoria squeaked.

“ _This ain’t about the cold_.”

Alecto had scrubbed her hands until she could see the pure blood bead from her knuckles. The skin on her cheeks was seared smooth. Her rolling tears popped more bubbles in the sink, and she rubbed the raw spots on her hands, which made them worse. When she finally raised her eyes to her reflection, though, she breathed herself down to some level of calm.

“Be nice to have the ointments Hestia makes for this, but she won’t give me none unless I make her. She don’t love me,” she divulged. “Our own niece hates us.”

 _You made her hate you_. _She would have loved you –– even you –– if you truly loved her_. _You’re not entitled to her,_ _Alecto_.

“I can’t let Amycus see me like this. He’ll worry. He’ll know I was contaminated. He’ll know I did this and couldn’t stop.”

Astoria thought of what to say. Alecto was too ashamed of the impurity of the event to go after the student who had sneezed on her. Whoever had done it, though, was in for brutal torture if Amycus found out. What would be the explanation? There wasn’t a healing spell for this sort of skin damage. It had to be treated with medicinals.

“Say you were jinxed,” Astoria offered, though her teeth grated angrily against her compassionate tongue.

Alecto put her hand over her mouth and cried, “But that’d be a lie.”

 _You lie all the time_.

Alecto inhaled, “I guess if –– when –– he asks, I’ll say I was jinxed.”

 _Oh. He’ll still go after the one who ‘jinxed’ you_ , Astoria realised too late, and she berated herself endlessly for giving Alecto the idea. Another student would be harmed, and it would indirectly be Astoria’s fault. Actually, no… Amycus would certainly go easier on someone who had supposedly used magic than if he discovered there had been half-blood snot all over his sister.

Astoria took a hard look at herself in the mirror, wishing her instinctive kindness away. Alecto and Amycus had been the children of people who systematically made them feel worthless, who literally beat into them what it meant to be pure-blood. This obsession with purity continued well beyond the old Carrows’ self-imposed trip to the grave. Their daughter was harming herself with hot water at the chronological age of forty-six over nothing.

Flora and Hestia’s father had been too young to remember the wrath of his parents over every indiscretion, nor was he old enough to face the same pressure they had. As a sibling, it was easy for him to reject Alecto and Amycus’s authority. They hadn’t had that opportunity to reject their parents. They had to be _perfect_ , and that constant pressure and rejection had made them quite the opposite. Astoria and Daphne had been pressured heavily by their parents, too, but the Greengrasses never would have stopped _loving_ the girls if they didn’t live up to expectations. They never would have given them the silent treatment for days on end. They never would have backed the girls into a corner and beaten them. They never would have used the right words to put them over the wrong edge.

 _I don’t want your memories_ , Astoria thought bitterly, remembering everything Alecto had spilled out in the hotel. _I know how you got here, but that doesn’t make you innocent_.

“Don’t use the Hot-Air Charm to dry yourself off. That will make you burn more,” Astoria advised, betraying herself yet again.

 _Why do you do this to me_?

Alecto’s eyes welled afresh with something one might call gratitude in a normal person. Astoria quietly left before Alecto could drown her in her hell.

~

 _So this is what sympathy gets me_.

Amycus’s face was half-obscured in a shadow cast by a particular curve in the corridor, away from the condensation-covered windows. Astoria held her hand tightly against her wound, which both was and was not from him. It had been Astoria’s turn again to take a hit from Flora in his class. Flora had been making great efforts to deal the lightest, flimsiest, and most stifled versions of curses she possibly could; however, given that the spells were so inherently nasty, things like this happened all the time. Flora was always reluctant, but she had shown so much reluctance to harm Astoria again that Amycus threatened to cast the Imperius Curse on her. Knowing that any and all curses would hit her fellow students with tenfold the power if she were Imperiused, Flora did as she was told.

Amycus would not drag Astoria back into the classroom. With the bleeding, she was now an inconvenience, not a toy. He wanted to go back in and play professor some more, not clean up blood. Her wound probably would not heal right, but she needed to go to the Hospital Wing before she became woozy. Amycus was not keeping her in this spot physically or magically. _So_ _why had she stopped_ when he pursued her out of the classroom and called her name in a raw stutter, tripping on her syllables? The blood began to escape her fingers. And yet there she stood.

Amycus acted like he wanted to speak to her, like he wanted _his_ turn with the Legilimens. Maybe he wanted to “explain” his lesson, that this was how pure-bloods learn the ways of magic. But nothing happened. Whatever he wished to say had nothing to do with remorse, anyway. He would let her bleed again. Astoria at last took action to leave that she should have taken a whole minute ago. The moment she turned to leave, though, he closed the new space between them and intercepted her with a stern “ _Wait_.”

She shrunk back the moment Amycus’s hands went to her throat. He ignored her show of fear and began undoing her day-worn tie with lumbering fingers.

“You are pureblood, girl,” he reminded her. “Wear these colours proudly.”

Astoria wished she belonged to another House as she stood there frozen, expecting to be choked. Instead, Amycus tied a perfect trinity knot, which no Hogwarts student knew how to do. His icy hands left her, and his company soon after. Astoria ran down the corridor quickly now, trying to chase her sanity. The curse seared and throbbed again as she moved, and she dove for any support she could find with her other hand. A windowsill. The inside of the windowpane’s glass was fogged cold.

“Miss Greengrass? Oh dear.”

It was Professor Flitwick. He was carrying a huge, buckled scroll-bag on his front side that was full of magic texts. He unbuckled it to get close enough to see her wound. She hoped there wasn’t some charm she should have been able to cast that he would point out.

“Ah, this is the work of that Carrow wizard,” said the professor.

Astoria was fascinated that he had been able to read between the lines of the injury. Professor Flitwick cast a few quick-fix spells to stop the bleeding.

“Er, Professor…”

“This is Dark magic, Miss Greengrass, so we’d best go to the Hospital Wing at once. Come along!”

“Yes, Professor, but erm, how did you figure that it was Amycus and not Flora? Flora’s the one who cast it.”

“Well… Well, for one, this is not like Flora’s magic,” he said abstrusely. “It is unwilling magic. I’m more concerned about getting you healed than holding a lesson at this time, but if you were to use a mirror, you would see the laceration is worst at the point of first impact. The rest of the wound gets shallower as it traced across your skin. Think of a cat jumping on curtains. Flora was already retracting her claws as soon as she did this. You poor girls. I feel so helpless.”

“Do you know what Flora’s magic feels like?” Astoria asked. “Can you identify students’ magic? She had once said to me that she felt my magic, and I, er, didn’t know how.”

“Magic does leave traces,” said Professor Flitwick offhandedly. “Mind the staircase –– it’s due to move.”

“I can tell when my mother is using magic,” Astoria said, determined to stay on the topic, “and I think I can pick up on Professor Sinistra’s. Yet I wouldn’t know if my sister and my closest friends were using magic unless I saw them.”

“You are always concerned that you are less of a witch than those round you, Miss Greengrass,” said Professor Flitwick with a look. “Most people are simply not attuned to that. Traces of magic are passed down, I believe, rather than traded, so it makes sense that the ones you do recognise are from your dearest educators. I am particularly sharp when it comes to this sort of thing because I have to mark you all on performance. I can usually identify my current students’ work with some context and detective work. Flora might be more sensitive than she lets on.”

 _Traces of magic are passed down_.

That was like what Flora had warned Astoria about Dark magic. The educator’s intentions and the user’s interpretations were in a constant struggle during the spell.

“Thank you for explaining that to me,” Astoria said.

“Oh, that’s part of my job! Miss Greengrass, I must admit that I’ve wanted to say how sorry I was to hear about your family, and I couldn’t seem to think of the way to do it. I know there are some foul bullies in your House and didn’t want to feed any fires they might have already set for you. Several of us in the staff room had been talking about it, and none of us had the mettle to come to you. We were so terrified of –– do forgive me –– of it being like what happened to the McKinnons, that we didn’t want to bring it up to you. I have heard that your losses were grave, but that many also made it to safety?”

Astoria was so touched that she had to recover her words.

“Er, yes! Yes, my… most of my family! I don’t know where they are. Er, they thought I had died in the explosion, and they escaped. We –– we lost Renshaw and his family and Uncle Faunus…”

Astoria then realised that Professor Flitwick had no idea what “the explosion” _was_ , nor had he ever known Renshaw on account of him not being able to go to Hogwarts. She had said this abbreviated version of the story so many times and wondered if it would ever stop coming out in stammers and cries. Professor Flitwick looked at her with great empathy.

“I am so sorry, Astoria. We all are.”

She was sorry, too, for spending more time snapping at people than helping them understand. The people here did not know Renshaw and his family –– Renshaw was Astoria’s to lose –– but as Professor Flitwick said, they had feared that Astoria was one of very few survivors. She wondered if she could bring Professor Flitwick any relief as he helped check her in to the Hospital Wing.

“Adamina and Sofronia, they were badly injured but got out,” Astoria said, trying to think of Flitwick’s Ravenclaws. “My father’s okay. Valera Salem, Sylvester’s wife, she’s okay.”

Well, Professor Flitwick had taught more than just Ravenclaws.

“Rhiannon left with them –– she’s okay.”

Astoria didn’t want to put it as “four deaths,” since that cheapened that tragedy, but since the general public thought there were forty or fifty slain, she was at least able to tell the kind-hearted Professor Flitwick. Unlike the nosy students, he never cared a pin about _why_ she was dating Draco or _how_ she had become friends with the Carrows’ nieces. He knew her nature was not cruel. In fact, Professor Flitwick would never have guessed that her wand currently cried to be nursed on Dark magic. The professor’s concern for her and trust in her good character was so affecting that she nearly swore off the practice. That night, though, around the same time that Astoria was struggling to unknot her tie, a group of students from Dumbledore’s Army broke in to Snape’s office to steal a relic from Godric Gryffindor. The ripples of their actions, too, were keenly felt. Snape reinstated the Umbridgian decree that had once threatened to ban Pariah, and any students that were allegedly meeting in groups were promptly interrupted by Death Eaters.

In a moderate breach of their act, Theodore came crashing down onto the sofa where Astoria sat. His distress compelled Astoria to offer him some crystallised pineapple, which he gratefully took.

“So, apparently, Dumbledore’s Army is not important enough to bring out the big wands, but it _is_ important enough to make Millicent and I ask the student body what they know about it! How are we supposed to do that? Millicent told me what happened to Marietta Edgecombe’s face when she gave out their secrets!” Theodore exclaimed. “I hate this! I was never a Prefect, and suddenly I’m Head Boy! Do you know how many people I have to _talk to_ in a day now?”

“Er… that’s quite inconvenient. Could you simply follow Millicent’s lead?” Astoria suggested.

“Millicent told me it was too much work when Umbridge had her do it, and she definitely wasn’t going to do it for Amycus. _Someone_ has to report _something_ back… she just made this job worse for me!”

“Hm… You could just tell Amycus things that are common knowledge.”

“I’ll have to. I’m not doing this dirty work,” he said.

Astoria lost track of the Dumbledore’s Army drama throughout the week as she tried to avoid getting mauled by the Carrows. However, the following weekend, when Astoria found herself in the Restricted section of the library once again, she overheard the Carrows talking as they browsed curses to cast on the students. (It was difficult _not_ to hear them, in truth, which was sending Madam Pince into a panic attack). Astoria pretended to put her nose in a book but peered through the shelves get a look at the pair. By the look of it, their weekend had been spent blowing their newfound income on designer clothes. They had certainly cleaned up, but having spent a lifetime scowling, they would never clean up _nicely_. Astoria inched closer to the view, holding a book to her chin.

“I still say Snape let them kids off too easy. Probably ’cause their leader girl’s a _redhead_ , eh? Snape’d never stand a chance,” Amycus said, elbowing Alecto, and she squealed with laughter.

“Y’think this’ll teach ’em their lesson?” he continued, indicating something in the curse anthology he was holding.

Alecto leaned to inspect it, but she wasn’t impressed.

“Nah. We need to take this into our own hands, nice n’ slow. What’s that sleepwalking curse Rabastan can do? Maybe we could get her to come right to us,” Alecto suggested.

“What you lookin’ at _me_ for, Alliecat? I can’t do it. Guess you can’t either, if you’re asking me,” he teased. “Why don’t you ask that pipsqueak Rabastan? Always such a _nice_ bloke, ain’t he?”

“Oh, ‘nice,’ sure! Why don’t _you_ ask Rabastan?” Alecto suggested right back.

“Hm. Why don’t _you_ ask Rabastan?” repeated Amycus with a grin. “And look him in the eye.”

“Oh, stop it. You’re not funny at all.”

“I’m not? Well, you’re laughing. You laugh at shit that ain’t funny, Alecto?”

As if they were forty years younger than they were, they jabbed each other’s shoulders back and forth and escalated into even more obnoxious laughter that was sure to make Madam Pince retire on the spot. Then, without external provocation, Alecto suddenly put her hand to Amycus’s mouth to shush him and looked round with heightened paranoia. Though unsure how, Astoria thought she had been caught…

“Got company?” Amycus whispered.

“No, sorry, I––” Alecto broke off.

“It’s just Pince stacking books over there, Allie, it’s all right.”

Even then, they stood very still, as if trying not to alert a motion-dependent predator. Astoria did exactly the same thing. She had not been seen, but she must have been sensed. After a long, still silence, the Carrows hewed their sudden ice. Alecto hatched a plan for Ginny Weasley.

“Well, would you like to Imperius her?” Alecto asked with ironic politeness, as if Imperiusing somebody was equivalent to the offer of a tea sandwich.

Amycus courteously turned down the sandwich.

“Your magic has a nicer hold to it, Alecto.”

“It’s the same magic, Am,” Alecto chuckled.

“It ain’t, though. If it was, I’d’ve talked you into taking my O.W.L.s.”

“We passed the same O.W.Ls!”

“Doesn’t mean I wanted to take ’em, now, does it? And you did better.”

Alecto had a logical counterpoint, “It’d have been more effort to get Polyjuice to work than to just take the tests.”

“Ha! I _know_ you wouldn’t trust me to take yours, Polyjuice or not.”

“Not at all. I seen you write ‘this is a stupid question’ on exams!”

“Why were you watching me when I was taking exams, Alliecat? Trying to _cheat_ , eh? And you just said I wasn’t capable. Well, if it was _me_ takin’ your O.W.L.s, Polyjuice wouldn’t be a problem. I’ve already eaten enough of your hair over the years since it’s always in your cooking,” Amycus chortled.

“ _My_ cooking? Your cooking tastes like squirrel meat,” grinned Alecto.

“Ah, well, I must not be putting enough _hair_ in it for your taste,” Amycus joked, rubbing his fuzzy head.

Though it wasn’t for Madam Pince’s sake, Alecto tried to control her giggling for the first time in five minutes. She clapped her hands together and said, “We got on a tangent.”

“We did.”

“What was I sayin’ again?”

“Weasley,” Amycus chimed.

“Weasley.”

 _Ugh_. Astoria had been biting her lip, hoping they would forget their diabolical plans for Ginny during their trip down memory lane. It was not so. The longer she stood there, the more exposed she felt, and she knew that anything they did to Ginny they could try on her first.

“Well, if you insist, I’d be glad to Imperius her,” Alecto whispered.

“And what about them other two?” Amycus asked.

“Longbottom and that Loonybin are overdue for some punishment, so do what you like in class. I know it’s Weasley whose idea it was. Pansy Parkinson told me Weasley was Potter’s favourite squeeze.”

“Oh, puke,” Amycus fake-gagged. “ _Warn_ me, Alecto.”

“Warn you ’bout what? The Boy Who Lived to Puberty?” Alecto rolled her eyes.

Amycus snorted with more insufferable laughter. His ugly grin creased dark lines through the auburn stubble on his face, and he asked, “So… what’re you gonna make her do?”

“All’s I’m doing is making her come to me. The rest won’t be fun if she’s Imperiused and can’t remember it. I want her to be scared. I don’t think we can beat any sense into her, but what kind of teachers would we be if we didn’t try?” Alecto sniggered quietly. “We’ll throw her back in the woods this time, at the far edge where that giant oaf can’t find her. How’s midnight sound?”

Amycus whispered something that Astoria was not able to catch. _Damn it_. Did that mean he agreed, and they’d come after Ginny near midnight? Or would they Imperius her _now_ and act later? Astoria held her breath. She carefully watched to see where they were going, and when they walked left in their row, Astoria went right, and rounded the corner of the shelves just in time for them to leave the area. Astoria quickly put her book back and went to look for Ginny Weasley. She searched all the popular hangouts of the castle and found everybody _except_ her. Astoria didn’t want to ask people if they knew where Ginny was lest more rumours spread about her. After all, they’d probably say _she_ was the one who cursed Ginny.

Astoria ran into Flora and Hestia on her way to the higher regions of the castle. They had been looking for Astoria in the Astronomy library. Since it was the weekend, Slughorn was letting the Slug Club make their own fizzy drinks in the Potions laboratory. Astoria could have used the diversion, but Ginny’s safety was more important. The twins’ safety was most important of all, since their involvement could prove disastrous. Astoria pretended she had N.E.W.T. Astronomy to do and continued searching the castle until she ended up lost. Unfortunately, she encountered the Death Eater Selwyn in a lonesome corridor on the sixth floor. He grilled her about why she was in that area when there were no classes and escorted her all the way back to the common room with a pinch under her arm. Astoria cursed her bad luck; she had spent all that time trying to look for Ginny to warn her, when she could have simply waited until dinner when Ginny would have been there! Why didn’t she think things through when she was nervous?

To her dismay, she never saw Ginny’s red head at the Gryffindor table, even though the Carrows calmly ate their dinner in plain sight. Astoria racked her brain trying to think of which girls Ginny hung out with, but the longer she stared at the Gryffindor table, the more the Gryffindors noticed, and the more they started saying things about her. Regardless, any other students who knew might also end up in danger, so Astoria considered her other options. She could tell Professor Sinistra, but she didn’t want to put the professor on the Carrows’ blacklist. The same went for the other teachers. Who knew what things the Carrows would report to Voldemort if the other teachers started going against their wills? Professors Sinistra, Flitwick, and McGonagall could easily take the Carrows, but all three of them combined could not beat Voldemort. Too afraid of what would happen to the staff if they tried to intervene, Astoria didn’t tell anyone. By the time she had worried her way through every scenario, she was certain Ginny had already been Imperiused.

 _What do I do_? _What do I do_?

Her dinner churned in her stomach as everyone round her went about their evening. Astoria nearly wished she had not been privy to the Carrows’ conversation so that she wouldn’t have to think about it so much.

 _What do I do_?

Astoria opted to stay in the common room when everyone else settled in for bed. With Death Eaters on patrol, it wasn’t like Astoria could try snooping round each room in search of an Imperiused Ginny. She watched the clock. She watched the Foe-Shard on her wrist, turning it in the light. It had Amycus and Alecto in it nearly every day. It also often showed the Death Eaters’ faces beneath their masks, which wasn’t always useful, since Astoria couldn’t recognise them that way. As of right now, though, it was empty.

She looked at the clock again. If the Carrows saw through with their midnight plan, Ginny was already in the woods. Astoria walked toward the common room exit and checked her wrist again. There was nothing, which meant no one was standing outside. That in itself was a rarity. So Astoria trotted to her dorm room. She cast a Silencing Charm on her feet and sneaked in without a light. In the armoire, Flora kept a heavy travelling cloak with a hood. Astoria borrowed it and crept back out. She had never quite made up her mind that she was going to do this. Her body had simply started moving because her mind would not stop stalling.

Astoria hunkered down in a corner of the empty common room and tried to cast the same Disillusionment Charm that Theodore had cast on her to make her blend in with her surroundings at his house. It didn’t work as well when she did it, probably because she didn’t like to feel the icy cold on her body. At best, she looked similar to Quennell back when he used to be more see-through. She certainly wasn’t invisible. However, when casting it again didn’t make a difference, Astoria gave up trying and left the common room. Hopefully, with the combination of her black robes and the partially-effective Disillusionment Charm, she would go unseen in the dark.

She knew all of the doors in the castle were guarded by dementors, Death Eaters, or sometimes both. Astoria would have to find one without a Death Eater, because Death Eaters had the ability to see her. Her heart started its race, but there was no finish line in sight. Thinking of the dementors made her wonder why security trolls had ever fallen out of fashion. Astoria squinted into the tiny Foe-Shard again, and there was nothing yet. She moseyed out of the cold dungeons and up to the basement, where the kitchen and the small corridors always kept everything warm. Astoria convinced herself that the more casually she went about this, the better luck she would have.

 _I left my textbooks in the Astronomy library_ , she rehearsed in her head.

It was a pitiful excuse, so she would have to do her best to avoid any living soul. When Astoria heard a sassy meow, she felt her mission was all over. Mrs Norris, Filch’s cat had come to wait by the kitchens for any scraps. She, for one, could see Astoria plainly and hoped that she would not give Filch something to do (he seemed to amble the castle with a bored expression these days). Astoria tried to sneak round her to no avail; Mrs Norris actually liked Astoria’s group and demanded attention whilst she waited for her scraps. She bellowed a great, multisyllabic meow and pawed at Flora’s good cloak before plopping on her side and wanting her belly rubbed. There were few worse times for this to occur. To quieten her, Astoria knelt and silently petted the cat until she uttered a “mrrrp” of contentment.

Astoria was amazed she ever made it up to the Great Hall. This was not a good location, as it was a popular spot for Death Eaters to meet up between walks. As predicted by her Foe-Shard, there were no Death Eaters, so Astoria stayed as snug to the wall as she could whilst bustling out of there. The main entrance was stupidly tempting, but Astoria saw no fewer than four Death Eaters in her detector as she passed by it. Trying to stay out of any lamplight, Astoria went down a few corridors that led to the courtyard outside the Divination room. It was sure to be guarded, but the windows in the classroom would give her a good look at any other options.

 _Oh no_.

There were so many dementors there, Astoria couldn’t discern between the coven and the night’s darkness. Her eyes wandered up to the sky as she struggled to think of her next move. She had a decent view of “the sea,” an area of dim constellations with oft-nautical themes.

 _Water_.

 _Boats_!

In spite of her progress, Astoria strode all the way back down the hall, back through the Entrance Wing, and through the Great Hall, which was unlikely to be empty much longer. She shimmied past Mrs Norris in the basement, who was happily distracted with bits of chicken, and back into the dungeons. This was how she had been brought into the castle when she had first become a student, when she didn’t know that she passed the common room of her House-to-be on the way up.

In spite of the dank chill, Astoria was getting warm under the cloak from her excitement. No Death Eater would sign up for boathouse duty. She felt the floor’s incline change, and she ascended in a single loop to the fishy-smelling area. She checked her Foe-Shard as she approached. Nothing. Eventually, she came upon a mossy door. Doors were the biggest impediment, since they were loud to open, and she could not see what was behind them. Astoria was too afraid to test her luck, so she knelt in the corner and pointed her wand precisely at an eye in the wood.

“ _Defodio_ ,” she whispered, and slowly Gouged a small hole through which to peek. To her embarrassed shock, a great deal of magic came bleeding out of the door, making dark purple pools near her feet. So the door had been cursed… thank goodness she dealt it damage before opening it. Unfortunately, she had no way to clean up the evidence. Through the hole, she saw that there were two dementors stationed in the boathouse, one for each long dock. She hadn’t a clue if they had been commanded to _instantly_ Kiss rather than their usual play-with-their-food approach. She had to assume the worst. It plagued her to think how many of the full-grown creatures were roaming the woods after all those terrible mists last year. Astoria knew that a Patronus was brighter than a signal flare, but she didn’t have a choice, and poked her wand through the door to get the dementors before they got her.

“ _Expecto Patronum_ ,” she whispered, trying her best to twist her wand the right way. It wasn’t working very well; she had incorporeal ether forming, but not one of Pavo’s feathers lit the boathouse. She cast him every night, so she assumed the problems were her limited range of motion and the two real threats down by the water. With some of the incorporeal spell in place, Astoria opened the boathouse door and shut it quietly behind her. The dementors knew she was there straightaway; if what they had could be called body-language, then it certainly turned hostile. Frightened, Astoria was going to attempt the full spell, but she thought that could cause more trouble. A corporeal Patronus _repelled_ dementors, meaning that these two could float away from their posts and bring unwanted attention to where she was. Perhaps this was one of the few times an incorporeal one was best, so Astoria held up her wand and drew a circle, bringing the spell into a more certain barrier.

 _What am I doing_? she thought scornfully as she took slow, dreadful steps down one of the paths. The dementors were floating all over, zigzagging past each other over the water, waiting for her. Astoria was doing her best to remain positive and collected. She wished she could call out to them and say, “I’ve got no soul! Fresh out! Alecto already ate it!”

Yes, Astoria had the Patronus, but it hardly seemed like enough to actually walk down there. Astoria thought she might blend in with the dementors from an outside perspective, since she had Flora’s gothic travelling cloak and a Disillusionment Charm on her that made her quite spectral. It was too bad the dementors would know the difference. Too bad she couldn’t throw them a bone to get them a tad further away. It was a matter of personal space, really.

Astoria had written a myriad dementor essays over the past few years with resources saying there was nothing to be done about dementors except a Patronus, but she was willing to try anything. She sparked an idea. Far enough away still, Astoria briefly lifted her Patronus.

“ _Accio large fish_ ,” she said with her wand over the water, and it was not long before a great catfish jumped at the surface. Astoria shot the biggest Cheering Charm she had ever mustered into the water with a splash and Banished the fish over to where the dementors were. She watched in joyous shock as the catfish continued to jump as though dancing, and the dementors were momentarily distracted by the energy of the Cheering Charm seeping out of a life form. The dementors could cause no real harm to animals, but they were attracted to it. They fluttered against the water to try to get a taste of human magic.

“ _Expecto Patronum_ ,” Astoria quickly re-cast, shrouding herself with the spell and running across the docks, which creaked in protest.

The dementors were much more interested in the real thing than the charmed fish and wasted little time in approaching her. Uncle Faunus once said that if chased by a swarm of bees, jump into water. Astoria was never a harasser of beehives and doubted water would deter a dementor that had set its prey, but it was one option. The lake was awful, but nothing down there was worse than having her soul ripped out. She would prefer not to be sodden and cold, and she knew her cloak was too heavy. The boats were too slow and would serve as evidence. The dementors had closed in during her stall and circled terribly on the outer range of her spell. She would have to make her next moves even faster than she had dealt with Lofthouse at Quennell Park. For a hair of a second, she let her Patronus go, and already she smelled the brothy oxtail soup from Alecto and the carrion bundimuns beneath Professor Sinistra’s house. When she glanced at the dementor’s dark grey hands, she saw the blood pooled in Renshaw’s dead arms again…

“ _Glacius_ ,” she said firmly, and the surface of the lake turned to ice. “ _Expecto Patronum_ ,” she followed nearly in the same icy breath.

She slipped, slid, and stumbled over the ice she had formed atop part of the lake as the dementors followed close behind. They always missed their final stretch due to her incorporeal Patronus. Astoria did not look back at them, only forward at the first patch of land. She was so grateful to reach it, muddy, wet, and fishy though it was. When she looked back, she discovered the two dementors back at their stations. She wondered how long they had been back there and she had merely been feeling their presence. Apparently, they were unable to move beyond a specified area to keep the castle exits firmly guarded at all times.

Being near the lake, Astoria was on the wrong end of the castle from the forest. Even with her appearance muted and ghostly, she couldn’t be seen circling the grounds, so she walked straight out to the edge of the property before moving toward the forest. From where she was, she could see no glinting Death Eaters’ masks or pointed hoods and knew they would be totally unable to see her. After a long, knee-pain inducing walk, Astoria came upon the forest on the other side of the school. It had all been for this moment, so she didn’t like how her nerves kept telling her not to go into the woods. She knew what the problem was; she was thinking of Quennell and his Horcrux more than the stories students passed round about detentions with Filch. Astoria stretched out her arm into the thicket.

“ _Accio_ _Ginny_ ,” she said.

She knew the results. Summoning Charms weren’t supposed to work on people.

“ _Accio Ginevra_ ,” she still tried for good measure.

Into the forest it was.

Somewhere near Professor Hagrid’s cabin, there was known to be a pathway into the forest, so Astoria located it and headed inside. The air changed instantaneously, sweet and leafy and chilled. She walked, still in the reach of the cabin’s hearth smoke for a time. She was on guard, but even though there were many a carnivorous creature in the wood, it was not quite as gut-wrenching as Quennell’s death-place. Enough noises, though, made her think to turn and get Professor Hagrid, who had been in charge of Ginny’s original detention. However, she knew he did not take kindly to Slytherin students as a general rule. He was also rather large and might make enough noise to attract the Death Eaters down to the grounds. Most of all, she didn’t want to bring anybody to Azkaban with her if she were sentenced over this.

 _What am I doing_?

Astoria was far enough into the coppice to light her wand. It made an eerie little circle just ahead of her, like a will o’ the wisp telling her to go in further. Hungry owls, one of the least dangerous things in the forest, were making the most commotion and likely masking the snorts, grunts, and footsteps of beasts. Astoria noticed herself attempting to Summon Ginny more frequently the further she went in, though it never did anything no matter how far in she walked.

 _Alecto said they would put Ginny at the far edge_. _I bet she_ ’ _s off the path_ , _too_.

The singular woodland path was not much to speak of as it was, and to stray would have involved thorns in her legs, branches in her hair, and the saliva of animals three times her size dripping on her shoulder. She recalled Draco’s story of being in here, and it comforted her. Though she had a tremble, she could nonetheless say that she was tougher than eleven-year-old Draco. He’d say she was mad for doing this, and he would be right. Every so often, the path would empty into a clearing where Astoria could see the sky. From the position of what stars she could see, she placed it at about two in the morning. She felt she had dug herself more than halfway through the forest and began wondering what it emptied out to on the other side, for no one ever spoke of it. Was it the rest of the mountains? The lochs? The void Tehom?

“ _Ginny_!” Astoria called, though she figured the Carrows had cursed Ginny’s voice out of her. “ _Ginny_!”

Astoria did not want to call out again for fear of attracting predators. She had been waving her wand back and forth carefully on the entire hike, looking for a glint of red or a human shape. The Carrows had wanted to permanently traumatise Ginny without quite killing her, so it wasn’t like they had thrown her into an Acromantula nest…

“ _Homenum Revelio_ ,” Astoria cast aimlessly round the ground for perhaps the fiftieth time on this trip, thinking Ginny might have been made invisible, too.

Each time she cast something, it felt like every creature in the deep could see and smell her, but she had made it so far from the dormitory for this stupid Gryffindor, and she wasn’t going to turn back. She fondly remembered all the times she and Ginny had made fun of Pansy; it was one thing they could forever agree upon. Her heart was sinking as she inevitably thought she might be too late. Just because the Carrows hadn’t exactly intended to kill Ginny, it didn’t mean she hadn’t died in the forest. Astoria wished over and over again that Ginny was alive somewhere as the howls and cries of species unknown sounded in the far valleys.

Astoria kept struggling alone as the path narrowed. It was grown with one season’s worth of grass and often obstructed with fallen trees, which Astoria chopped up more loudly than intended. She heard terrible rumbling, but there was no storm. Perhaps she had left evidence in some way or another, and the Death Eaters were after her. She started reciting heavy magic in her head, the Darkest spells she had absorbed into her grimoire. She would be in one piece by the end of this night at all costs. The rumbling continued, and Astoria kept looking up, hoping at some point, she’d see the offending storm system. Most of the time, though, the tree cover was too thick, and there never was a drop of rain. She kept moving, though she dimmed her wand light to almost nothing, only enough to see in front of her feet.

She heard a thunderous crack like the sound of a Stunning Spell and started running. It was so hard to tell from where the sound originated, but since she knew it wasn’t forward, she kept going and going until the path all but disappeared. She fought her way through hanging vines, giant logs, spiderwebs, and animal burrows that dropped her down and threatened to sprain her ankles. All the while, she heard noises of something breaking tree limbs and snapping its way through the floor debris. Then she saw two yellowish light sources behind her right side. Two Death Eaters?

 _I killed Xavier Lofthouse and Caleb Price_.

Astoria shook those two out of her head and got to business.

“ _Protego Nidhogg_ ,” she gasped as she ran, and the Shield trickled out of her body, down her arm and out the wand, but the blackness of the Shield made the dark forest impossible to see. What a poor decision; she was now destroying more woods by moving with the Shield round her than whoever was chasing her. Astoria felt the spell’s offensive properties fight her to come out, the black dragon seeking violence to commit.

“Shut it already!” she told the spell immaturely, as though the dragon lurking in it was fully sentient, and she scrambled deeper in the woods.

Whoever was behind her was casting roaring spells that sounded nearly like the motors and automobiles in the city Alecto had kept her in. Astoria had never heard a spell like that and wondered if the Shield would be enough. She grew quite worried that if the dragon reared its head and brutalised the Death Eaters, she’d turn the Forbidden Forest into her own Horcrux or whatever the hell Quennell had done… Was that how that worked?

 _VRROOOOOM_.

The two lights veered behind her so closely that they shone with blinding force even thorough the dark shield. Astoria screamed, realising it was an automobile, but having no way to make sense of it. It hit her shield hard and sent her flying backwards in the air. She held her wand with both hands close to her body in the hopes that the Shield would keep, and fantasy images of Theodore’s mum dying from this exact thing flashed in her mind’s eye. How was there a car here? Death Eaters would not drive a car, and the whole Hogwarts property was Muggle-proof!

 _THUD_.

Astoria’s Shield hit the top of the automobile before she did and helped to keep her bones in all the correct places. Before she could process anything that was happening, the automobile continued to speed through the woods, rumbling loudly against sticks, rocks, and bushes, which all flung from either side of the wheels and past Astoria’s ears. She was screaming, but she could barely hear herself over the angry machine. She had to free the extra hand on her wand to grip the car somewhere, but there wasn’t anywhere good to hold on. With the speed it was going and the fear of what any of this meant, it never once occurred to Astoria to jump off. She slid left and right and went airborne more than once when the car jumped –– _jumped_! –– over logs. Astoria was rapidly getting sick, and her head went all over the world in search of explanations. Namely, who was piloting this thing?

She flattened herself on her belly and, whilst the car continued weaving through the trees with unreal speed, she scooted carefully toward the edge, taking her increasingly angry Shield with her. She managed to peek her nose over the edge of the car for but a second… And there was nobody in it.

“ _AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH_!” she screeched, rapidly hoisting herself back to the top of the car and plastering her cheek against the cold blue metal. The Shield’s dragon started spiralling out of her spell, and she was not of mind to do anything about it now; its snakelike body ended up trailing behind the car in the wake of the wind it kicked up.

“ _AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH_!”

The possessed automobile performed manoeuvres worse than any Quidditch Seeker she’d seen, and she held on for dear life as huge tree limbs snapped against the outside of her Shield. Glass was flying out from whatever was left of the car’s windows, and the horn was blaring at Thestrals to steer clear of the way. Astoria had no concept of time or space when the car halted, and she once again went airborne, this time flying forward off the machine and felling the tree she crashed into with the force of her Shield. Barely in her senses, Astoria stifled the rampaging dragon somehow and lay breathless next to the cracked tree stump. The car rumbled behind her, not moving an inch more than Astoria did in her shock. Her eyes rolled side to side and glossed with a whirlwind of fuzzy colours. In the lights from the auto, Astoria glanced upon something glinting silver behind a large thorny brushpile. Accepting the fact that in spite of her distress, she was physically unharmed, Astoria sat up. It was still very hard to see with the dark shield she had, so she let it go and kept her wand ready to cast a normal one. Without the film of black between her and the environment, Astoria recognised the shining silver as being Ginny Weasley’s pure-blood identification bracelet. The wrist it was on was thankfully attached to the rest of Ginny’s body. Astoria wobbled over, motion-sick as could be.

“Ginny! Ginny?” she gasped.

The thorny brambles completely encased Ginny, who was belly-down and covered in blood and mess. Although the thorns had likely ensured that Ginny had not been eaten by a monster, they were sired by Dark magic and prevented her rescue. Ginny was not in a Full-Body Bind Curse, but something Darker: the Paralysis Curse, which was twice as difficult to cast and would not wear off with time alone.

Ginny had not made a sound, but her eyes had been wide on Astoria the whole time. Astoria also knew the other curse that had been cast, and felt a deep pang, as it had been one of her favourites for her grimoire. It was called “Liar’s Crib,” a spell made ages before Veritaserum, and had a prohibitively long incantation. The victim would be pricked each time they lied, and the thorns were incredibly hot and painful. The counter-curse stood opposite; it was short and sweet, though highly specific to the spell. Even with D.A.D.A. training, no one was likely to know it unless they had studied the curse itself.

“ _Verum ariolum_ ,” Astoria said without pride, and the awful nest disintegrated.

“ _Finite incantatum_ ,” she followed, and Ginny squirmed freely, balling upon her knees and finally sitting up. She had to be terribly cramped, and she still wasn’t talking. Astoria cast the counter-hex for the Silencing Charm to no avail. Given her history, Astoria tapped her wand a few times to her side and tried the same thing again. Then it was time to troubleshoot. Ginny was making frustrated motions at her which did not speed Astoria’s rate of critical thinking. Ginny was utterly mute, so it had not been a mere Tongue-Tying Curse. She was making charades, holding both of her hands at her mouth and flinging them outward.

Trying the catch-all again, Astoria cast “ _Finite incantatum_ ” right at Ginny’s mouth to no avail. “ _Sonorus_.”

Ginny shook her head no and pointed at her lips. Maybe the Carrows had done a deed even more horrible and busted her voice box.

“ _Reparo_ ,” Astoria said with her wand at Ginny’s throat, but Ginny threw her hands in the air in exasperation. (It hadn’t seemed like as stupid an idea as Ginny apparently thought).

“Fine then! We’ll do it this way! _Specialis Revelio_ ,” Astoria said, smacking Ginny on the mouth with her wand.

Ginny’s cheeks swelled and turned translucent, and the problem was shown briefly through her skin. The Carrows had hexed a wad of mud into her mouth and sealed it shut. How disgusting. It was like the playground-bully version of what Lofthouse had cast on Adamina. Astoria thought hard through a list of curses she had not bothered with, the ones that probably would have delighted the likes of Crabbe and Goyle.

 _Ah_. This hex was developed in the 1920s to terrorise blood-traitors. It was a known favourite of racist schoolboys. Astoria didn’t even know the incantation for it, but she remembered the counter-hex because one _had_ to say a slur to do it; it was a teacher’s enemy.

“ _Done with the dunglicker_ ,” Astoria said, doing a pert twirl with her wand.

Ginny’s mouth opened, and she started spitting everywhere violently, indeed without missing Astoria. Astoria jumped out of the way and promptly cleaned herself to the sounds of Ginny’s spitting. She wondered if she had frightened Ginny with her ethereal appearance, but that had to be nothing compared to what the Carrows had done.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING‽” Ginny finally made the words. “THAT’S MY DAD’S CAR!”

Ginny gripped her stomach and tried to stand up to meet Astoria eye-to-eye.

“ASTORIA, MY DAD’S CAR –– WHAT THE HELL‽”

“HOW WOULD I KNOW THAT’S YOUR DAD’S CAR‽ IT NEARLY RAN ME OVER! WHAT DO YOU EVEN MEAN _YOUR DAD_ ’ _S CAR_ ‽ WHERE’S YOUR DAD‽” Astoria shouted in turn.

“HE’S AT HOME!” Ginny exclaimed as though Astoria had asked a stupid question.

“THEN WHY’S HIS CAR HERE –– NO, NO, WHY DOES HE _HAVE_ A CAR‽ WHAT’S GOING ON‽”

“YOU TELL ME, YOU’RE THE ONE WHO CRASHED IT INTO A TREE!”

“IF YOU DIDN’T NOTICE, _I’M_ THE ONE THAT CRASHED INTO THE TREE, AND YOUR DAMN CAR IS FINE!”

“IT’S NOT MY CAR, ASTORIA!”

“WHY IS YOUR DAD’S CAR IN THE WOODS‽”

“I DON’T KNOW –– MY STUPID BROTHER, PROBABLY –– WHO KNOWS!”

“WELL THEN STOP ASKING ME!” Astoria wailed.

“WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU CRYING FOR‽” Ginny hollered.

“ALL MY SUFFERING,” Astoria wept overemotionally. “ALL MY SUFFERING, GINNY!”

Astoria teetered away and leaned on the cracked tree stump. She had started to cry after all, but she barely felt it. That just showed how much of a stupid cry-baby she was. She couldn’t tell when it started or stopped. She started laughing, hysterically, and it didn’t match her mood at all. She didn’t even _have_ a discernible mood at this point; she was experiencing the moment simply as “Ginny is alive and so am I.”

“ _YOUR_ SUFFERING‽” Ginny countered. “THERE’S BLOOD CAKED ALL OVER ME AND MY MOUTH IS FULL OF DIRT, AND WE’RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT _YOUR_ SUFFERING‽”

“I JUST SUFFER SO MUCH!” Astoria howled, laughing wet things into her hands. “I JUST DON’T CARE ANYMORE! ALL THIS SUFFERING!”

“OBVIOUSLY, YOU WENT MAD IN THESE WOODS BEFORE I DID!” Ginny flailed round, walking in circles.

“WELL, WE’LL HAVE TO GET BACK OUT SOMEHOW!” Astoria yelled.

“I DON’T SUGGEST RIDING ATOP THE CAR AGAIN. YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO SIT INSIDE IT, YOU KNOW!”

“I GET OUT ENOUGH TO KNOW _THAT_ MUCH ABOUT CARS, GINNY!”

“YOU DON’T SEEM LIKE THE TYPE, THE WAY YOU CAME HERE RIDING IT LIKE A HORSE! I NEARLY PEED!”

“WELL, IF YOU NEED TO PEE BEFORE WE LEAVE, I SUGGEST YOU DO IT BEHIND THIS TREE, AND I’LL MOVE!”

“I DON’T NEED TO PEE, ASTORIA!”

“I’M JUST TRYING TO HELP!”

“BY CALLING ME A DUNGLICKER‽”

“THAT WAS THE INCANTATION!”

“OH, _RIGHT_! I BET YOU FRENCH KISSED THAT WORD RIGHT OUT OF MALFOY’S MOUTH!”

“GINNY, YOU NIT, I WROTE A SONG WITH RHIANNON CALLED ‘DUNGLICKER!’ I GET CALLED THAT ALL THE TIME BY DIANE CARTER!”

“WELL, I DIDN’T HEAR THAT SONG! WHY WOULD I HAVE HEARD THAT‽”

“WELL, THANKS FOR _NOT_ SUPPORTING OUR MUSIC THEN!”

“OH MY GOD!”

Ginny whirled round in exasperation, still clutching her abdomen. In the car’s headlights, Astoria saw heinous wounds that made Ginny’s fluffy sweater stick to her body at little points of blood. Ginny behaved as though she were wandless, so Astoria got a hold of her Portkey-ride of emotions and approached her again.

“May I fix you up, please?”

“Oh, you tell me,” Ginny said back with a small, sad voice.

Ginny looked like a warrior there between the headlights of the running car. Her long hair was a flame; her sweater a red flag of bloody history. She had dirt splattered on her face, smeared into thin lines from the elbow of her sleeve. Her eyes were a lighter brown than Rhiannon’s. Astoria could look at anything in the world and somehow make it about Rhiannon by way of comparison or contrast. She missed her. She needed her in moments like this.

Ginny leaned on the leg less painful and the light cast her face a different way. Astoria recoiled; Ginny had heavy abrasions along her cheek that were highly reminiscent of the rug burn Alecto had given her in the hotel.

“Wh-What happened here? I’ll fix it as best I can…” Astoria said, pointing not to Ginny but to her own cheek.

“Oh, this. This was when they cast the Scouring Charm. They said I needed ‘cleaning.’ Turns out it’s a pretty harsh spell when it’s not used on floors and countertops,” Ginny sighed. “The Scouring was their favourite part.”

Astoria conjured a wide bowl and filled it with water from her wand. She let Ginny dowse her face with it and then dumped the water into the leaves, freshening it again. She conjured a tiny rag and dipped it in the water, telling Ginny to clean any area that was not already trying to scab over.

“Shouldn’t I clean out _all_ the wounds?” Ginny argued.

“No, don’t,” Astoria cautioned. “If something gets infected, Madam Pomfrey can treat it easily, but if you reopen a wound from Dark magic that already scabbed, it will be like the spell is being cast on you again. I’m serious. Your body is trying to fight the magic.”

“Nasty,” Ginny said, shoving her hair out of her face and dabbing sore areas along her neck and arms. She grimaced several times, so Astoria conjured another small rag, dipped it into the water, and then froze it with a much less frantic version of the charm she had cast on the lake earlier. Ginny held the ice rag against her stomach. Her sore face… it felt like it had been rubbed against pavement…

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Ginny said defensively, and Astoria quickly averted her eyes.

She was reminded of the times Professor Sinistra had tried to evaluate Astoria’s injuries by way of surficial Legilimency. She remembered having snapped at Professor Sinistra.

 _What an ungrateful person I am_.

Astoria cast the Numbing Spell that Hestia had used on her after Flora’s awful bone-breaker. Ginny claimed it helped whatever was wrong with her stomach, or maybe she was just trying to make Astoria feel useful.

“We’d best go,” Astoria said to distract Ginny from the fact that she didn’t know much healing magic.

They stared through the glassless front of the car, which really had a mind of its own.

“I’d never have found you without this thing,” Astoria said, trying to talk herself into coming back into contact with the car more so than trying to reassure Ginny.

“All right. Well, I’m the one driving back,” Ginny said distantly.

“No complaints there.”

“Sort of means you have to get into the car, Astoria,” Ginny said, climbing into the side with the wheel.

“I know that,” Astoria snapped.

Her hand touched the cold metal and yanked the creaky door open. She used the wrist of her sleeve to wipe pine needles, assorted dead bugs, and squirrel-cracked nuts off the seat. Then she packed herself into the thing and held her breath. Everything smelt of plastic.

“Hi ho,” Ginny said to the car. “Let’s be off. Chop chop. Spit spot. Let’s go. On now. Lift off. Take off. Go forth. Move. Drive. Presto. Up and away. Yip yip.”

“I didn’t have to use an incantation to get it to move,” Astoria mentioned as Ginny rattled off another dozen phrases.

“Hey, I don’t know what happened between you and this car, but I think the honeymoon’s over, and I’m really going to have to drive it,” Ginny said. “Give me a light so I can see the controls.”

Astoria lit her wand.

“D, that must be for drive. There’s P. Maybe for making Portkeys. R for rocketing? That’s probably what we need.”

“Didn’t your dad teach you about this thing?” Astoria interjected as Ginny put a hand on the car’s wand.

“No, my family was fined by the Ministry for this car! I haven’t seen it since I was little! And Dad only got round to teaching the _boys_ about driving before the world started ending! So no, the answer is no!”

Astoria held on to the side of the door as Ginny yanked the car’s wand down to “R.”

It was almost as bad as the trip there, and one worse aspect was that Astoria couldn’t scream without looking like a fool in front of her Gryffindor accomplice.

“ _Point me_!” Astoria said during the singular lull in the flips and cartwheels. “Ginny, we’re going the wrong way! We need to go west, not south!”

“GREAT! The car’s also driving backwards, if you haven’t noticed!”

“Well, turn it back round!” Astoria yelled and got a mouthful of bowtruckes coming in through the side window.

“DON’T YOU RECKON I’VE TRIED THAT‽”

“HAVE AT IT AGAIN, WHY DON’T YOU‽”

Ginny set the car’s wand to “D,” and it went further into the air, threatening to crest the trees.

“NO, NO, NO!” Ginny shouted. “WHAT IF THEY SEE US‽”

“GINNY, I’M NOT THE ONE DRIVING! YOU ARE!”

“AAAAGH!” Ginny roared.

They were spiralling upwards into branches.

“ _Protego_!” Astoria cast between her and Ginny’s faces as the rush of bowtruckle-filled leaves came in from all sides.

“JUST –– GO –– BACK –– TO –– HOGWARTS!” Astoria screamed.

“IT’S LIKE IT DOESN’T WANT TO!” Ginny responded. “LIKE IT WANTED TO SAVE ME FROM THE SCHOOL, TOO!”

“GINNY, I”VE ALREADY BEEN A FUGITIVE THIS YEAR, SO IF YOU’RE TRYING TO ESCAPE HOGWARTS, YOU NEED TO LET ME OUT OF THE CAR FIRST!”

“GOT BIG PLANS FOR THE DEATH EATER POTLUCK, HAVE YOU‽”

“I’D SOONER DIE, IF YOU HAVEN’T GATHERED THAT FROM MY SHOWING UP IN THE WOODS AFTER MIDNIGHT!”

“ASTORIA, I REALLY CAN’T GET THIS CAR OUT OF THIS LOOP! I’M GONNA BE SICK!”

“YOU’RE A QUIDDITCH PLAYER!”

“THIS IS _NO_ BROOM!”

“DAMN IT!” Astoria cussed, and she withdrew her Shield at the cost of a few pinecones and a wild bird entering the front of the car.

She leaned forward into the whirlwind and pointed her wand where most of the car’s noise originated –– the front, just beyond the window. If it had a mind of its own, then it would have to listen.

“ _IMPERIO_!” Astoria spat, and the car puttered in teeter-totter fashion back towards the forest floor, where it remained floating a few feet above ground.

The bird fluttered out, leaving feathers behind. The bowtruckles scrambled to the floor of the car. Ginny let go of the wheel and grasped the sides of her seat, her jaw clenched.

“How is it that you look _more_ scared now‽” Astoria griped.

“Let’s just go!”

“ _HOG_ - _WARTS_!” Astoria shouted at the car as though it would have trouble understanding. “ _WESTWARD_!”

They trundled along at a comfortable speed, rising and falling like a boat on water to avoid logs and branches. Astoria sat back and crossed her arms, enjoying the cool breeze as it brushed her hot forehead. The two girls said nothing, though Astoria kept wondering when Ginny would _thank_ her. Thanks were definitely overdue.

“Er, Astoria… there’s… Oh. OH! ASTORIA! DEMENTORS!”

Ginny was trying to cast a Patronus. Astoria shook out of her grouching and looked ahead. The mist had already got into the car, and there was a whole coven of them up ahead. Of course. _Of course_ dementors. Enough was enough.

“WELL EXPECTO PISS OFF!” Astoria erupted, and the car took off and whizzed right over their ugly heads. Ginny kept looking back to see if they were following.

“They’re gone,” she announced after they had covered enough ground.

“Yeah.”

Ginny had not asked a single question about how Astoria had got there, what it took to do this… There wasn’t a _word_ of thanks on Ginny’s tongue.

 _Oh_.

Speaking of tongues, Ginny’s had been covered in dirt, and she had only rinsed it out with a bit of conjured water earlier. Astoria conjured a goblet and gave Ginny more water. A lot of it ended up splashing on the car (a plant would probably grow in here soon), but Ginny had enough to rinse out her mouth again and spit out the window. Again, no thanks. So much for that.

Though tired, Astoria got a hint of smoke from Professor Hagrid’s fire, and she stayed more alert so she would know when to stop the car. They approached the end of the forest downwind from his cabin rather than beside it. Close enough. Astoria was going to tell the car to stop, but it bent to her will alone, and she didn’t have to say anything aloud. She and Ginny alighted the thing, and Astoria released the Imperius Curse. The car grumbled once more and retreated backwards into the bushes.

“I came out by the boathouse. There aren’t any Death Eaters, but there are two dementors there, and they’re pretty hungry since people don’t go that way very much,” Astoria disclosed.

“Yeah, we’re not doing that,” Ginny said.

“I’m going to make you less visible,” Astoria warned, and hit Ginny with the Disillusionment Charm.

In contrast to when Astoria had cast it on herself, Ginny was nearly gone from sight. There was a faint hint of her red hair just in front of Astoria, as though she were looking through coloured cellophane. Her outline seemed to have some visible turbulence of magic, but other than that, she was out of sight. Astoria followed Ginny’s footsteps in the wet grass, wondering what bright ideas she might have about getting back inside the castle.

“Do you know the Sticking Charm?” Ginny asked.

Did she know the Sticking Charm! Astoria knew the Sticking Charm, all right. During her home-schooling, before she could control her wand, her father had had her try sticking an autumn leaf back onto a tree in their front garden. Apparently, her Sticking Charms leaned toward the Permanent variety, because the leaf was still there, preserved perfectly and unable to sway in the wind. Father had not been happy.

“Hello? Astoria?”

“Yeah, I know it.”

“Okay, we’re going to get outside Gryffindor Tower and climb it.”

“Hm? With what?”

“With our hands and feet. You’re going to cast the Sticking Charm on us,” Ginny said impatiently.

“Ginny, I did not agree to that.”

“What’s the problem? You’ve a better idea?”

“Er… we could conjure ropes. Perhaps I could Levitate you up there…”

“What good are ropes going to do when we’d have to use a Sticking Charm along with them anyway? And a Levitation Charm isn’t going to get me all the way up there.”

“Mine will,” Astoria said. “Mine will put you in the clouds if I get frazzled enough.”

“Listen, even if you get me up there, I’d have to nick one of my roommate’s wands, hope it works, and then get you. _You_ might think you can send me into outer space, but I’ll own up to the fact that I won’t be able to reach you once I’m up there.”

“Hm. Well, erm…”

“What’s the problem with Sticking Charms anyway? It’s our best bet. Let’s go.”

“Ginny, erm, what if we stayed at Professor Hagrid’s?” Astoria begged once the idea struck her.

“Two reasons. First, Hagrid will get all worked up and storm up to the castle to say what happened to me and get himself in trouble. Second, a priss like you wouldn’t last three minutes in there.”

 _“Priss_ ‽ Is that all I am in your eyes now? We used to get on fine before your boyfriend sliced Draco across the throat!”

“Astoria, look, be quiet, all right, we’ve got to get to the castle.”

“Do you think a _priss_ would go into those godforsaken woods at one A.M. and step in Thestral poo _twice_ to come and get you‽”

“You know what, _sorry_! I just said that to get the point across. If you want real sleep, you’re not gonna it at Hagrid’s. The dog slobbers everywhere, and you can hear Hagrid’s snoring from Ravenclaw Tower.”

“No, you really think it! You think I’m a prissy, stuck-up blue-blood,” Astoria glowered. “Just because I’m with Draco doesn’t mean I’m the same person as him. On top of that, with everything that’s happened, he’s really––”

“I don’t care a pin about your shiny new boyfriend, Astoria! Let’s get up this hill! Cast the charm on my feet so I can get to my room and sleep. Mer _-lin_!”

“You’re doing an awful lot of telling me what to do when I risked my life to get you out of there! You’re lucky you’re still alive, Ginny! I don’t know what was going through your head, bringing back Dumbledore’s Army at a time like this! The only reason they aren’t _murdering_ blood-traitors like us is that there aren’t enough pure-bloods left. We’re still worth five Galleons if we’re turned into the Ministry! Azkaban’s a real place, you know!”

“Oh, you say ‘five Galleons’ like that _isn_ ’ _t_ what your family cracks walnuts with!” Ginny exclaimed.

“Well, together, you and I are worth ten Galleons and six pure-bred babies apiece, so shut up around the Carrows!”

“ _You_ shut up! We need to be quiet and get back up there as quickly as possible!”

Astoria spent the entirety of their trek trying to cool herself down lest she glue Ginny Weasley to the outside of the castle for eternity. They stood in the nook between the curve of the tower and the castle’s ground floor. It wasn’t nearly the height of Astronomy Tower, but from the ground looking up, Astoria felt uneasy.

“All right. Cast it really lightly so I can move my feet,” Ginny said.

“Well, I have to undo the Disillusionment Charm for a second so I can _see_ your feet.”

“Make it quick. I don’t know how far the Death Eaters strut from the entrance points. And get my knees and hands, too. This is going to take a lot of upper body strength.”

Astoria didn’t exactly have upper body strength to spare for a task like this. Not to mention she _hated_ heights and barely ever flew. Her stomach still felt the car ride. Well, thankfully, Ginny did not end up being permanently stuck to the castle and wiggled her way up a bit. Astoria re-cast the Disillusionment Charm on her and tried once more to cast a better one on herself. The third time was the charm, literally, and she was now invisible. It was not her best sequence of action; she had to feel for her feet and draw her wand directly to the tips of her knees to get the Sticking Charm ready. Regrettably, her left hand was the stickiest by far, and as she hoisted herself up onto the wall of the tower, she had to fight her hand off the surface every time.

“Where are you?” she asked Ginny. “Tap your foot so I can hear.”

Ginny tapped one of her feet lightly. She was probably an adult person’s length ahead. Astoria shimmied up the castle, one limb at a time. When she got to the rather pitiful height of eight feet, she felt unhappy, and at eleven feet, her head went light. She would still Stick even if she fainted, at least. Astoria shut her eyes. Her arms were so sore.

“Did you get stuck?” Ginny’s voice fell from above.

“No…”

“How far down are you?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“If we get any further apart, we can’t talk. I don’t want to raise my voice, or they’ll find us straightaway.”

“Ginny, I know that.”

“Well, keep up.”

“I have twig arms and a fear of heights, Ginny.”

“No kidding.”

Astoria dug her nails into the stone. What a crude girl Ginny had turned out to be. Astoria should have left her in the woods.

“You doing okay still?”

“I guess,” Astoria said.

“Keep your eyes shut and just follow the sound of my feet and hands.”

“I can’t see you with my eyes open anyway.”

“No, but you can see the ground.”

“Mm, don’t remind me.”

“I grew up doing stuff like this all the time. It’ll be all right. We’ll get there okay.”

 _I grew up pressing flowers and playing piano_ , Astoria thought grimly. Ginny came from a “one fork per person at the dinner table” kind of family. Actually, the Weasleys might have called dinner “ _lunch_.” Astoria had never once thought less of her for that, since however poor Ginny’s family was, Rhiannon had been poorer. It was a sort of raised-nose envy, though. Ginny knew how to do everything. She was popular, tough, and always tried new things. Astoria, who had been taught to make good impressions, had never even got the hang of that. She just wanted a telescope and free time. A bowl of soup and someone to read with on rainy nights. Her left palm peeled from the stone uncomfortably.

“Almost there,” Ginny whispered.

 _Yeah, then what_? Going up this tower was _opposite_ from the direction Astoria needed. With all the Death Eaters, sneaking downstairs from Gryffindor Tower was going to be worse than the woods. It was like this tower and the dungeons were deliberately far apart to keep the Gryffindors and Slytherins segregated. When they weren’t, they ended up doing things like Imperiusing already-enchanted Muggle cars and crawling on the outside of the building like spiders.

“I’m at the ramparts outside the common room windows. I’m going to hoist myself over them. I’ll let you know when I’m there and help you up.”

The wind rustled Astoria’s cloak and hair, and she tried her utmost to not picture how high up she was. As long as she didn’t look down, her brain would only have its imagination to go by.

“I’d go right to my dorm, but if I came in through the windows, my roommates would all have heart attacks.”

“Mine too,” Astoria said to keep her mind and body off the ground.

“I didn’t think you had windows in your dorm.”

“I don’t. That’s why they’d have heart attacks.”

“Very funny. Come on up.”

Astoria grabbed the decorative stones and loathed how she had to move her body outwards in order to scale them. Astoria hoisted herself up with trepidation. Then Ginny pressed her hand directly on Astoria’s nose and grabbed her cheek.

“GINNY!”

“Shush! I can’t see you! Sorry! Where’s your arm… There, I got you! Hop over already.”

It was very narrow, but Astoria’s feet hit a solid surface at last. Her toes were all scrunched and curled from pressing the balls of her feet onto the castle walls for so long. She Unstuck herself and her accomplice at all points of the spell. She put her hands on the windows and started feeling round.

“Astoria, what are you doing? The window’s got a curse on it,” Ginny said.

“How do you know?”

“I just know. It feels like it.”

“Oh, so you can _feel_ magic, too?”

“Sorry? Yeah, I guess, I dunno. Look, just figure out what curse it is so we can get in.”

“ _Specialis Revelio_ ,” Astoria said. “Erm, it’s a Caterwauling Charm.”

“Balls.”

“I know the counter for one this small. I can’t fix Hogsmeade, though, so don’t ask.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

Astoria actually had no counter-charm because there wasn’t one. There was a certain way to trick the system with Dark magic, though.

“Stand back a bit,” Astoria said.

“Not much room left, if you haven’t noticed.”

“I meant move down. There. Good.”

Astoria wand-wrote some foul formulas along the whole edge of the window they sought to enter. This had not been her preferred breed of the Arts at first, but she had come back to it after being bound and strung up on the ceiling in one of Amycus’s classes. As she set the numbers into the windowpane, a sigil began to appear and burn on her wand hand. With Astoria being more or less invisible, the sigil looked like it was floating in the air. The arithmancy represented the words “Caterwauling Charm,” which was their obstacle, “Severus Snape,” who, if not the caster, was the overseer, and “disobey.” Dark magic, being somewhat alive, did the rest and had set a personal counter right into the palm of her hand. Magic like this could be used for far greater purposes, but Astoria felt wrong to entertain those ideas. She put her wand away and smacked her hand against the glass.

“ _Offendus finitus_.”

The Caterwaul died, and the window gave way, silently buoyant, as though it were a nothing more than a small bathtime toy to be pushed under the spigot. Astoria’s hand shook, so she grabbed her cloak to stop the feeling.

“Don’t just stand there. Go in,” she mumbled.

“That was a _lot_ more than a counter-charm, Astoria.”

“Don’t I know it. Go in.”

“That magic’s not good for you.”

“Neither is chocolate cake. _Get_. _In_.”

She heard Ginny crawl through the window and followed, shutting it behind her. The Gryffindor common room was decorated in red and gold and was very warm. It had big, soft chairs with pillows and mismatched rugs on the floor. The high ceiling drew Astoria’s eye. The girls’ and boys’ stairs stood parallel, like the Slytherin common room, although there were more stairs to climb since they branched out into tinier turrets rather than weaving through the sub-terrain. Astoria made Ginny and herself visible again. They both looked like absolute messes.

“We should clean up,” Ginny said.

“I have to go.”

“No, you don’t.”

Astoria stared perplexedly at Ginny, who started walking up the stairs. She followed her yet again. Ginny’s dormitory door opened for her without a key.

“You shouldn’t leave your dorm unlocked in times like these,” Astoria whispered faintly.

“Lock? We don’t have keys, we have magic,” Ginny said.

Salazar Slytherin had evidently not thought of how to personalise magic into the dormitory doors themselves, and all of his students ended up with inconvenient keys.

“Oh, well we have magic keys so that the Unlocking Charm doesn’t work,” Astoria said. “Sometimes we add to it, though, for more safety.”

“Do you really need to do that?”

“Alecto’s not my idea of a good cuddle.”

“Ah. Yeah.”

Ginny had four roommates, some of them new after the consolidation, and they were all asleep. Astoria cast the Muffliato charm temporarily so she and Ginny could use the bathroom. Astoria sat on an ottoman in the dark whilst she waited for her turn. She envied the spacious room, big enough to fit _five_ four-post beds, five trunks, five nightstands and five desks, and plenty of space left on the floor. But it didn’t have any of Hestia’s baubles, or Flora’s books, or Rhiannon’s loose-leaf paper. It didn’t have music sheets or celestial maps or competing candle scents. The blankets were thinner up here, not huge and fluffy and full of pilling. Ginny had some medicinal creams to rub onto her wounds, and she came out smelling like herbs.

The Gryffindors’ bathroom was too large. The ample space by the sink had lulled the Gryffindors all into cluttering habits. Given all the space to sit in the dorm, the tub served no purpose other than to bathe in. Rhiannon and Astoria never would have had to sit in a tub to have their overnight conversation about their respective hunger for Hestia and Draco. Hestia never would have been able to make a decent medicinal emulsion in a tub this large.

Well, Astoria was grateful to see any sink after the night she had. She washed her face and ran her fingers through her hair several times over to get all the plant bits out. She looked at the dark hair strands that had fallen into the sink and chuckled before wiping them out. None of Ginny’s friends would _ever_ come up with “Polyjuice gum” to crash a funeral with. Astoria cast a simple cleaning charm on her clothes. It wasn’t as good as washing them, but it was better than nothing. Anything was better than nothing in this life. Ginny might have thought Astoria was a priss, but she had deep thanksgiving in her heart for small comforts after what he had been through. A lot of emotions had been flung back and forth.

 _Ginny and I didn_ ’ _t mean what we said_.

Their actions were speaking much louder than their words tonight. Astoria conjured up a mattress to the best of her ability next to the closet. Ginny tossed her an already-existing blanket and her extra pillows. Astoria nearly thanked her, but caught herself. She drew Flora’s hood back over her head, huddled in the covers, and pretended with all her might that she wasn’t there.

In the morning, Astoria woke to Ginny’s voice. There was a thin layer of sweat and dirt on her body that made the day dreadful already.

“She got caught by the Carrows,” Ginny lied to a concerned roommate. “I let her stay here.”

Astoria pretended to be asleep again. She was so glad it wasn’t a weekday. Her eyes moved across the floor, looking at shoes and clumps of dust under beds. The other girls left the dorm, and Ginny stayed.

“I was thinking you should show up to breakfast, actually,” Ginny said to Astoria, knowing she was awake, “because your pair of Carrows _and_ Snape’s pair of Carrows are all going to look for you otherwise. Once Amycus and Alecto find out I’m not in the woods, they’ll want to know what happened.”

There were a lot of words in that sentence for Astoria’s sleep-inert brain. Breakfast time…?

 _Draco_!

Astoria’s conjured bed disappeared before she could get out of it, and she dropped to the floor. She had, for the first night, missed Draco’s patrol shift. He had been without a Patronus all this time.

 _How could I forget that_?

She knew how she forgot; few things had taken precedence over surviving the Forbidden Forest. Draco could have been wondering where she was since four in the morning! She hoped with all her heart that he hadn’t raised alarm. Hopefully, he thought she had simply slept through it. Astoria didn’t want to rush down to breakfast, though. She wanted a shower.

“Didn’t mean to scare you like that,” Ginny said. “I thought it would keep you out of trouble if you went now.”

“No –– that’s not… I didn’t remember to…”

 _Oh_ , _Ginny doesn_ ’ _t care_.

Astoria rubbed the back of her sore neck and recalled her date in Hogsmeade with as much detail as she could.

“ _Expecto Patronum_ ,” she said, and out of the shimmers sauntered Pavo, spreading his feathers wide in the room.

“Okay, Pavo, go… ugh, just go make sure Draco isn’t panicking,” she told the peacock, and he disappeared through the door.

Astoria turned and saw red pepper freckles and raised eyebrows.

“Why do you talk to your Patronus?” Ginny asked with a snide grin. “You named it, too? After a constellation?”

“Leave me alone,” Astoria murmured, and she left for the bathroom. She couldn’t hide in there forever, though, and she wasn’t going to shower with the Gryffindor’s stuff.

“My Patronus is a horse,” mentioned Ginny when Astoria came out. “I wish we could have ridden it out of the forest.”

“Mm, that would have been nice.”

“Have you seen the peacocks at Malfoy Manor? Isn’t that what your Patronus is?”

“I’ve never been there. Draco and I aren’t really supposed to associate.”

“My dad used to do searches there before the government fell. He hates the Malfoys to pieces, but he said he liked to see the birds.”

“I’m no fan of the Malfoys,” Astoria felt the need to say. “Lucius and my father hated each other. I’d like to give Lucius a piece of my mind for what he’s done to his family.”

Ginny stretched her legs under her blankets to even them out, then crawled over the top of them. It was an even quicker way to make the bed than magic.

“I think you’d better keep away from them altogether, really,” Ginny said casually, as if those words did not bite and break the skin.

“Is that right? Don’t you think I could say the same thing? _Yours_ is on wanted posters,” Astoria mentioned slickly.

Ginny looked up at her like there was salt in her eye.

“I haven’t been able to contact him at all. I wake up every day not knowing if he’s alive or what. He said he was breaking up with me to, you know, keep me safe and all that nonsense. I knew he didn’t mean it, but either way, we’re apart.”

Interesting. So Harry Potter had faked a breakup to protect Ginny, whilst Draco was drawing Astoria closer to protect her. Both were pitiful attempts, not to mention unnecessary.

“That’s very difficult,” Astoria said. “I’m sorry, Ginny.”

Ginny then stifled any vulnerability she might have shown.

“What was it like… when you found out?” she asked Astoria.

Astoria remembered bending Crabbe backwards over a table and casting Legilimency on him to get information about Draco’s plans. Theodore was the one who willingly told her about Draco’s Dark Mark after the Death Eaters had left the castle last year.

“It was bad,” Astoria said, and the short summary almost made her laugh. “Well, after my family was attacked, I kept thinking, what if Lucius had been in that group? I couldn’t control the thought.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah.”

Astoria stood in the warming sun awkwardly. It was bright in the room; she was thankful that the sun never woke her up in her own dorm.

“Ginny.”

“Yeah?”

“I want you to stop plastering Dumbledore’s Army all over the walls. They’ll keep doing things like this to you. Amycus is aiming to hurt Neville and Luna in D.A.D.A. There is no telling if you’ll get your wand back from them. Professor Sinistra has spares from her parents.”

“I’ll figure out a way to get my wand.”

“With your Dumbledore group? What did I _just_ say?”

“Astoria, I can’t live with myself if I don’t do something! I’m trapped in this school, and the teachers can’t do much, and the world is breaking apart out there! They’re arresting and killing Muggle-borns. What I’m doing with the D.A. is a _drop of water_!” Ginny exclaimed, slamming a hand on her mattress.

“There are less stupid ways to die than a school club, Ginny!” Astoria returned.

“You don’t even know what we _stand_ for! It’s the same thing you want deep down, isn’t it? But you’re too scared, so instead of coming to talk to us, you’ve turned to Dark magic! Talk about a _stupid_ way to die! Only a fool dies by their own wand!”

Astoria clenched her fists, but she felt the burn from the arithmancy sigil in her right palm. It made Ginny’s words hit harder. She looked at her hand. Her own Dark magic was going to leave a scar. At least it looked sort of like a flower.

“I could cast Dark magic a thousand times more carefully than you and Neville could ever spit on Alecto,” Astoria said.

“You know what? You do you. I’ll do me. Obviously, we’re only fighting because we don’t want to see each other hurt,” Ginny said crossly.

“Oh, an impasse?” Astoria rolled her eyes. “Well, don’t die getting your wand back. If I were you, I’d pretend the forest really did the trick, and I needed my wand for ‘channelling my birthright’ or whatever.”

“Yeah, well, you’re a Slytherin,” Ginny said with a snort.

“Through and through,” Astoria said.

“I guess I can’t complain, seeing as you saved my life,” Ginny said.

“You’re welcome.”

Ginny sniggered and threw a pillow at Astoria’s back on her way out. Astoria hid in her hood to make sure Ginny didn’t see her smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Witch painting sources:  
> [Love Spell](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Witches_in_paintings#/media/File:Der_Liebeszauber_by_Niederrheinischer_Meister.jpg)  
> [Witches Going to Their Sabbath](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Witches_going_to_the_Sabbath_\(Falero\)#/media/File:Witches_going_to_their_Sabbath_by_Luis_Ricardo_Falero.jpg)  
> [Départ pour le Sabbat](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Witches_in_paintings#/media/File:Albert_Joseph_P%C3%A9not_-_D%C3%A9part_pour_le_Sabbat_\(1910\).jpg)  
> [The Witch](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Witches_in_paintings#/media/File:The_witch,_by_Luis_Ricardo_Falero.jpg)  
> [Junge Hexe](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Witches_in_paintings#/media/File:Wiertz_-_Junge_Hexe.jpeg)  
> [Les Sorcières autour du feu](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Witches_in_paintings#/media/File:Les_Sorci%C3%A8res_autour_du_feu_Paul_Ranson_PMD_976.3.63.jpg)


	17. An Abstract Concept

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 17 - "Run" by Daughter
> 
> *** This chapter contains underage sensuality.**

Astoria pressed her back to the scratchy stone wall, barely out of reach, and inched her body under a heavy tapestry hung in the corridor. The Carrows were only a few broomlengths away from her, standing in a perpendicular hall. They were in a rocky conversation with Theodore and Draco.

“I want you to tell me what happened, Nott –– without your input, Malfoy,” crowed Alecto.

“Draco found the boathouse door damaged,” Theodore started, and Astoria’s body erupted in goose pimples, “The curse over it was broken, dripping all over the floor. I’d know that roundabout magic anywhere –– it’s that Greengrass girl. He was going to report it to Snape, but he told me first since I’m in his dorm. Well, I’m not wasting any time about this. I know who it was, and I’m putting her in detention.”

Astoria was infuriated with Theodore for mere seconds and then remembered that he was trying to trick the Carrows into thinking his dad was truly missing because of her. He must have had something planned. Astoria leaned her head against the wall and breathed shallowly.

“She was only trying to practise her Patronus on a real dementor –– I have her Patronus right here!” Draco interjected.

“WITHOUT YOUR INPUT, MALFOY!” Amycus repeated his sister’s words.

“Anyway,” said Theodore confidently, “Draco and I have been at a standstill trying to figure out whose jurisdiction this lies under. I’d like to think it’s mine. I’m Head Boy, after all. But Draco thinks that since he has one of the Dark Lord’s _spare Marks_ on his arm…”

Amycus and Alecto laughed at Draco’s expense. Alecto’s sugar-soiled voice said, “Trying to save your girlfriend, Malfoy? She’s pretty stupid to pull something like that. Do you even know where she is?”

Amycus chortled, “Well, now, if the dementors Kissed her and she fell in the lake, I figure the body’d drown, eh?”

“Her Patronus wouldn’t _be_ here if she was Kissed, Amycus,” Alecto said irritably.

“Was a joke, Alliecat.”

Alecto narrowed her eyes and broke into a smile, “I never know with you, do I?”

“I take offense at that, so I do,” Amycus stuck up for his own intelligence.

“I’m of mind to find Greengrass,” Theodore piped up. “I’m of mind to put her in detention until Christmas. I’d like to know once and for all what happened to my father.”

The Death Eater pair murmured to each other.

“Round her up and learn her her lesson, Nott,” Amycus said. “’Bout time the little snot gets tortured anyways. Mixing our girls all up the way she does.”

Alecto nodded and tutted, “You take care of Greengrass, and we’ll take care of Longbottom. Seems he dragged his partner-in-crime back out of the woods last night.”

 _Neville_? _Neville took the blame_? _Is he mad_?

“Yes, Ma’am,” Theodore said.

The Carrows’ footsteps became fainter. Farther down the next hall, a large door creaked open and slammed shut. Theodore and Draco continued their conversation with honesty this time.

“Do you think that will cover Astoria?” Draco asked.

“I think they were fooled enough by my show of anger. Of course, now I’ll have to explain to Astoria that she has detention with me. I don’t know how that’s going to go.”

“I could tell her once I figure out where she is.”

“ _You_? Oh, no, that’d be bad.”

“She’s _my_ girlfriend, Theodore.”

“I know –– she’ll kill you. I’d best do it. I have a more soothing voice.”

Draco made an unforgettable noise with lots of hacking in response to Theodore’s comment, which in fact only strengthened Theodore’s point. What neither of them realised, though, was that she wasn’t angry. They had done such an excellent job of covering the evidence she had blunderingly left behind. It was fortunate the Carrows hadn’t put two and two together about Ginny.

“Well, something’s wrong because she only sent her Patronus out here recently. I’ve been worried sick about her all night,” Draco said.

“I’m right here,” Astoria said quickly to stop his worrying, but she made them both jump at the sound.

Draco grabbed her the second she came out of hiding and pulled her into an overly-dramatic hug. She hit her nose on his shoulder and protested his theatrics.

“Sorry. I was worried, Astoria. What happened?” asked Draco.

On account of the boathouse problem, she couldn’t give him an “Oops, I slept through your shift and nothing remotely interesting occurred last night.”

“Erm… it wasn’t Neville…” she peeped.

Draco didn’t get it, but Theodore gave her a toothy smile and shook his head in amazement.

“Neville must be taking the fall for Ginny and me,” Astoria whispered in Draco’s ear. “I’m the one who got her out of the woods.”

“I didn’t know she was in the woods,” Draco said, a bit predictably.

“I don’t know how the Carrows didn’t realise it was me,” Astoria remarked.

“Well, they’re sharing a brain, so resources are slim,” said Theodore. “Why’d you go on a rescue mission? To get invited back to Slughorn’s parties?”

Astoria scoffed, “No, and for the record, I forewent a club activity to do detective work. Anyway, you spoke of a detention quite readily. Obviously, you found the mess I made by the door. I assume you needed them off your back, Theodore?”

Theodore shuffled and said, “They were sniffing too closely for comfort since I haven’t done a thing to find out about the Dumbledore club. You provided the perfect opportunity to explain why I’m not hunting Weasley’s group during free periods, so we can cover for each other this way.”

“I understand.”

“You might have to pretend I’m casting the Cruciatus on you, though,” he noted, “if they come round.”

“I’m a decent actress.”

Draco soon asked her a thousand questions about her overnight excursion, his voice often tinged with judgement and censure. _How could you take that risk_ , things like that. He was getting as bad as her mother. Flora, Hestia, and Alexa were relieved to see her at breakfast but knew better than to ask anything there. They followed Astoria to the dorm and started popping off questions through the crack in the bathroom door whilst she showered off the woods. Astoria needed a way to get the girls off her case.

“Well, Draco and I were sneaking round pretty late…” she started, and they all scurried off, not wanting to hear any more. They never would find out about the Ginny fiasco.

After acting out several confrontations, Astoria met Theodore for “detention” the next day. He had picked the rarely-used Alchemy classroom because he enjoyed the artwork and diagrams hung in there. He drew up their chairs and locked the door with his wand. Astoria checked her Foe-Shard. She would have it visible the whole time, and if she saw anyone appear, they had their fake Cruciatus all planned out. Astoria would get down on the floor, writhe, and make crocodile tears whilst Theodore would hold his wand out. As far as Nott Sr, Theodore was going to transition from saying “I don’t know” to “my poor old father was likely killed in the explosion” during future questioning from the Carrows.

Astoria was so glad to talk to her friend again. It had been the hardest to fake their animosity in Astronomy, which was a small class. She bemoaned that Theodore had compulsively whittled more of his wand with his fingernails, telling him he’d get to the core soon if he didn’t stop.

“Professor Babbling is actually making me a handle, and she’s going to affix it when it’s finished. That’s where most of the damage is,” he said.

“I didn’t think you had her for class,” she recalled.

“I don’t; she just saw what I’d done and got on my case, much as you’re doing now.”

Astoria then asked, “Well, how is your Astronomy project with Tracey coming?”

“Oh, I’m an insufferable bastard,” Theodore laughed. “We have to do all of our projects separately and then Meld the parchment together when we’re done. What do you and Draco do? Snog on top of the assignment until the words appear magically?”

“Yeah, it usually works well,” Astoria nodded.

They played eight rounds of hangman, in which Theodore deliberately picked words she wouldn’t know, until their time was up.

“That was the worst detention I’ve ever had,” she joked.

They were able to keep up an extremely convincing act that distracted the Carrows from the obvious. Since they met up every day, the detentions wouldn’t need to be until Christmas. The Carrows claimed Theodore had more important things to do. Astoria, though, was especially glad that she was still able to see him on Hallowe’en. That morning, Professor Sinistra had received three Howlers from Rabastan Lestrange, but she was only able to curse one of them shut before the other two exploded with harassing messages that rang out at the staff table.

Though nothing would beat hearing Rabastan’s Howlers, Astoria also had a worse-than-usual experience in Alecto’s Muggle Studies. Alecto had filled the room with real Muggle Hallowe’en decorations portraying witches as green-faced, ugly old women, often boiling human bones in their cauldrons. She also had plastic packages tacked to the walls of countless “sexy witch” costumes, and made them read nasty screenplays of Muggle horror films. Astoria knew that Alecto’s goal was to distribute propaganda, but those things had all been real items, and Astoria still had the reading on gender roles in Muggle society rattling her head. Since there was _nothing_ to be discussed about Muggle Studies in her own dormitory lest Hestia throw a hissy, she brought it up to Theodore.

“How much of Muggle Studies do you think is, you know, true?” Astoria whispered, as though if the words came out of her mouth too loudly, Voldemort would walk through the door and give her the Dark Mark for a job well done.

Theodore’s bright blues rolled upwards into his heavy hair. He appeared to be calculating.

“I would say thirty-two percent of it is true in some way, sixty-eight percent is outright lies, and zero percent of it has the right context,” he said with unneeded specificity.

“I feel like I’m a terrible person when the thirty-two percent catches my attention.”

Theodore cleared his throat, “I mean, I understand why you’re really hung up on the environment and gender issues and things like that. That doesn’t make you terrible. Muggles really do pollute –– and no, I don’t mean blood pollution. I mean rivers and air and habitats.”

“Exactly! See, I can’t talk about these things in the dorm or Hestia will cry and say Alecto’s words are working on me.”

“Well, the problem is Alecto is using ecofascism to try to convince you. Like, oh, we are an environmentally cleaner society, so we should have control over the other society. She’s starting soft with Muggles so that she can move into Muggle-borns. And from there, you’re no different from a Death Eater. So don’t fall for anything she says.”

“No! I don’t, Theodore, but I keep thinking of how Rhiannon was brought up. I can say this since she’s not here anymore, but her own dad tried to kill her. And I start thinking… how Muggle parents treat magical children…”

“Don’t you wonder how many Squibs are murdered by their parents? All throughout history? And _that_ goes unreported,” Theodore countered, and Astoria bit her tongue.

He added, “I’m not trying to fight you like Hestia. I’m trying to contextualise.”

“I know.”

“On the other hand, I would say you’d be foolish to marry a Muggle man. He’d never lift a finger at all whilst you cast spells over the whole house, day in and day out. A Muggle man would view your magic as luxurious or even servile, I think,” Theodore mused.

“Yeah. The only thing we’d have in common would be that neither of could get into Hogwarts at eleven,” Astoria groaned. “Still, I don’t want to end up like one of those ‘I’m not racist, but…’ people. I think if I had not begun practising Legilimency, I wouldn’t be having these thoughts right now. Muggles practically project their thoughts into the air.”

“Do you really think their thoughts are any different from _ours_?” Theodore challenged. “They aren’t! The only difference is you pick up on them more easily because they have no magic. I _am_ surprised Alecto’s been getting to you, Astoria. Who knew that all it would take for you to be a Death Eater would be to mention _light pollution_.”

“Oh, be quiet,” Astoria said.

Her talk with Theodore helped somewhat, but during the next Muggle Studies class, a terrible reading was dropped on her. It wasn’t the usual list of Muggle-borne diseases, coral reef destruction reports, or eugenicist nonsense, but an excerpt from a book written by the notorious reporter Rita Skeeter. Alecto wanted to show the students that their fallen hero and former Headmaster was, as she put it, “once on our side.” Astoria’s grip on the day’s readings was enough to crumple the paper. Apparently, Dumbledore had once been closely associated with Grindelwald’s anti-Muggle movement. There were real records of their writings on overthrowing and subjugating Muggle society “for the greater good,” and their words about being able to use magic freely amounted to far more than daydreams. In one of the handful of love notes Alecto made them read, Astoria’s attention made rounds on a particular comment of Dumbledore’s:-

> “… _[W]here we meet resistance, we must use only the force that is necessary and no more._ ( _This was your mistake at Durmstrang_! _But I do not complain_ , _because if you had not been expelled we would never have met_.)”

Astoria’s hair stood on end, and she looked at Alecto, who was already staring at her. Alecto was quite fascinated with this letter, for not only was it penned to her family’s former leader, but it also discussed his expulsion from Durmstrang, her former school. It appeared that Grindelwald had been expelled for using violence.

For as much as Astoria knew about Grindelwald’s mother, the author of her Legilimency books, she did not know much about the warlock himself. She pieced a few things together in her own little world whilst Alecto started prattling to the class. The Seer-Legilimens Gwendela Bagshot had studied abroad at Durmstrang, where she apparently met her husband and settled down, having Gellert. Her Inner Eye revealed to her that he would one day lead a reign of terror, throwing her into despair and depression. Gellert went on to be expelled from the same school his mother had been welcomed at, which was saying something, since they used Dark magic there. And apparently, Albus Dumbledore of all people had excused the action, saw past every warning sign, and actually believed deep down that blood purity was a cause worth fighting for. Astoria thought about how her Legilimency textbooks had been passed from Gwendela to Grindelwald, Grindelwald to Dumbledore, and Dumbledore to Professor Sinistra.

And Professor Sinistra to her.

Astoria’s eyes glossed as she looked at the scar in the palm of her hand. Dark magic was something passed from one user to the next, Flora had said, like a disease.

Alecto held Astoria back as students filed out of the classroom. Was all it took a weightless hand on her shoulder? No, it was her eyes. It had always been her eyes that kept her. Astoria stifled the magic of Legilimency because she had to. Alecto _wanted_ to pull it in.

“Hold still, Astoria.”

Alecto licked her thumb and rubbed it hard into the soft of Astoria’s cheek. Astoria did not at first know why.

“You got ink on your face.”

Alecto’s bad breath was in the spit on her thumb. The ink had been cleaner than this. Astoria had one eye shut as Alecto wiped the smudge to nothing. The ink on Astoria’s face had come from her clumsy hand, which Alecto lifted, too. It was Astoria’s own fault, was it not, for she had been taking notes in such a lie-filled class… Notes on how someone as gentle and pure as old Dumbledore had been so shadowy all along. Was it a way to make herself feel better for using Dark magic…?

Alecto conjured a cloth and wet it, thankfully with water instead of spit, and began to wipe Astoria’s palm and fingers clean. Astoria could have dared to escape this activity, could have run to catch up with the deeply concerned Flora and Hestia, but she remained in place. Alecto saw the old Dark sigil upon Astoria’s palm in her attentive cleaning.

“It’s okay,” cooed Alecto quietly, not knowing how or why the sigil got there. “You’re doing so well. Amycus is making a strong witch of you. He tells me you’re his best note-taker.”

 _I am_?

“I like when you listen to us.”

 _I don’t_.

Happy to have had the contact, Alecto gently squeezed Astoria’s palm, free of ink but forever marked with magic. Her red lips curved.

“All clean.”

~

Astoria and Flora spent that evening in the Library reading the kind of texts they did not want to write their names on during rental. Astoria copied spells into her grimoire with much the same sentiment as a jilted lover rereads old letters.

“Where are the other two?” asked Astoria.

“What, you can’t be _surprised_ that they haven’t joined us in this pursuit,” Flora said sarcastically.

“Flora.”

“Well, Alexa’s probably with Montel and Horatio. Hestia had to prep more venoms for Knockturn, since, as you can imagine, Tweedledee and Tweedledum already spent this term’s wages.”

“Ah. She should be done by now, though.”

“I would hope,” said Flora, still annotating curses. “I hope those two go alone to Knockturn, because when they take Hestia in the summer, she always comes back with another bloody Talking Sundew.”

“Well, we don’t want one of those in the dorm,” recognised Astoria. “I’ll go see if she is there.”

When Astoria entered the dormitory, she saw Hestia leaning over the running tap, and her long hair obscured her face.

“Hello, Hestia.”

Hestia waved without looking up and spit in the sink. Was she brushing her teeth? It wasn’t anywhere near bedtime. Wait. The sink was red.

“Hestia!”

“’S fine. ’M fine.”

Hestia was not fine. Astoria stepped into the bathroom, and since Hestia’s face was still obscured by her hair, she looked at her condition in the mirror. There were deep abrasions on the lower half of her face, and the sources of the blood were her scraped lips, mouth, and tongue. With her head bowed, Hestia fumbled through the drawers of the vanity to grab something.

“What is it? Which potion?” Astoria asked urgently.

“Yellow,” said Hestia through her swollen mouth, and Astoria found the bottle and gave it to her.

Hestia unscrewed the cap and started swishing her mouth with it. She stood back up and looked at Astoria as one cheek puffed out with the rinse, then the other. She looked so relaxed about the whole thing, which Astoria couldn’t understand. What was the point of learning the Arts if she couldn’t be there to stop this from happening to her friends? Hestia had clearly had her face and the inside of her mouth Scoured. The identities of the culprits were obvious. She rinsed and spit several times, after which she squatted, reached into the depths of their drawers, and retrieved another potion. It did not smell good, but she dipped a gauze cloth in it and held it against her face.

“We’ll go to Madam Pomfrey,” Astoria said as Hestia scooted past her, but to her displeasure, Hestia merely flopped sideways onto her bed.

“Pomfrey ain’ goin’ t’do anythin’ I din’ already do,” Hestia said through her injured mouth. It had to sting.

“Are you certain?” Astoria challenged. “What happened?”

Hestia let out an acerbic laugh, “Mm… well… I mighta made a remark.”

“If you won’t go to Pomfrey, I should at least get Flora.”

“Nn, don’ get Flora,” groaned Hestia.

Astoria crossed her arms and watched Hestia continue to pat her face with the cloth.

“Do you want me to cast a Numbing Spell?”

“If y’do, I won’ be able t’talk,” Hestia said, but she was barely able to talk anyway. “I numbed the ou’side already.”

There was no point in standing if Hestia wasn’t going to go anywhere, and Astoria wasn’t going to leave her. She slid her shoes and outer robe off and lay on the bed. There was nothing to be done. Astoria read a normal book for once, her arithmancy textbook. They were studying the fourth dimension, which made entirely no sense. Astoria tried to read the words anyway, even though nothing was clicking. Every so often, Hestia would put her wand in front of her mouth, cast something, and spat in the sink again. She must have been up and down ten times throughout the hour. Sometimes she changed which potion she took. It seemed Flora and Alexa would not be back anytime soon.

“I feel better,” Hestia finally announced.

“You sound better.”

Hestia patted her lips.

“We always got a scrubbing when we came home for summer. You know, to wash the Mud off.”

“I’m sorry, Hestia. I didn’t know that,” said Astoria clumsily. She sat up to face Hestia properly and set the dry textbook down.

“You didn’t know ’cause we didn’t say,” shrugged Hestia. “First few days of summer were always the same. And in general, it was hard to know what was and wasn’t allowed. They changed their minds often –– never in our favour. And it’s always about how grateful we ought to be. They should be grateful for _us_. We’ve been errand-runners since we got our wands. Sometimes we’d stay out, you know, go have fun in the Alley without them breathing down our necks. ‘You made us so worried,’ they’d say. I thought, yeah, they’re ‘worried’ we’d gone to the Ministry and reported them! Well, we never had any evidence of what they’d consider reportable. Plus there was Dad. We didn’t want Dad to be arrested along with them for neglect or whatever. Because they’d send him out for Knockturn deals so their track record was clean… We were so afraid they’d arrest Dad and leave them.”

Astoria nodded, her concern probably all over her face.

“To tell you the truth, we didn’t get _beaten_ much at all. It was more about control, confinement. But the times they beat us were just horrible, and Flora would always try to take the brunt of it, but they didn’t like to hurt Flora as much as they liked to hurt me. I dunno, it’s weird. Sometimes I think it’s because they know Flora’s caught up on Dark magic, or because she ‘behaves’ more to their liking. Other times I just don’t know.”

Hestia gently rubbed one of her pillows with her hand.

“You know… every time I turn round and Rhiannon’s not here, I feel it under my skin,” she said.

“You’re right. Everywhere I go, I feel like she ought to be standing there, shaking a newspaper at me or wiping chocolate from the corner of her mouth,” Astoria said warmly.

Hestia sighed, “Remember when I had a meltdown on your bed once Rhi started dating Asenath?”

“How could I forget?” Astoria joked.

Hestia wasn’t in the mood to joke, which made sense given the state of her face.

“Well, I said that you didn’t understand how I loved Rhiannon. I said I loved her all along, from the time I saw her. You said something to the effect of, ‘you fancy her’ and I was like ‘ _no_ , _no_ , I _LOVE_ her.’”

Hestia had always been a bit clingy when it came to Rhiannon, so Astoria could only imagine what the distance and uncertainty were doing to her.

“What I’m trying to say is that there wasn’t any way someone like me would have known what love was,” Hestia opened up. “To me, love was like, ‘wow, she talks to me.’ I was trying to figure out what love was by… I dunno… process of elimination. Because where I come from, it’s just someone you want to keep in your sight. And I _do_ feel that way, I mean, I wish I could see Rhiannon now and know she’s safe. But the possessiveness is not something I’m proud of. I know where that comes from, and I _hate_ it. I don’t want to be like them. Like… you don’t have to be a wad of gum in someone’s hair just because you love them. But that’s all we know; love is the same thing as this really bad fear of losing. And then from there you’re a weirdo! I don’t want to be weird, you know! I want to be like... eligible! Not a codependent mess!”

“Hestia! Hestia, you’re not a thing like them,” Astoria simply had to interject.

“Yeah, but… it’s been on my mind because now I get it. I realise what it means to love someone. I really love Rhiannon, and now she’s gone.”

Astoria nodded sombrely. She didn’t have the same type of love for Rhiannon that Hestia did, but hearing the words “now she’s gone” was tugging her heart.

“I get so angry with myself sometimes because I have all these thoughts like, ‘oh, Rhi’s travelling with Asenath,’ ‘she’s probably _living_ with Asenath,’ ‘I know Asenath is going to flirt with her again because that’s what Asenath does,’” Hestia harrumphed.

“I understand that jealousy because we’re separated from her right now, but if it makes you feel any better, Asenath _severely_ disappointed Rhiannon. She tried to jump right to sex, for one, and she was also seeing several other girls whilst she was involved with Rhiannon. There’s not going to be a rekindling of romance even if they do spend time together,” Astoria said. “Asenath made her feel like side meat.”

“True,” said Hestia. “Well, here’s the thing. Rhiannon and I said we were going to wait for each other. There’s no way of knowing that’s going to work. I mean, it would definitely work on my end if I can escape the Dark Mark. I don’t know if she’ll still be into _me_ , though. A lot has changed already.”

“I understand that, Hestia, but you and I both know it’s too early to tell.”

“Right. I know. At least I _understand_ Rhiannon. Asenath had an easy life, so she can’t relate to Rhiannon. Well, it’s not easy for Asenath since her father passed, and I’m sorry that ever happened. But I mean, I grew up with these freaks running the house, and even though Dad loves us, he’s complicit. I’ll never understand why he sits back and lets us be treated this way. He never hurt us himself, but he’s terrified of them. It’s like since he was raised by them, he won’t raise a finger to stop them. It’s been ingrained in him that they’re the ones in charge. They bring in the money even though it’s not much. I don’t know. Obviously, as you can see by my mouth, I’ve never been able to turn to them, but I never felt I could turn to Dad, either. He’s less helpful than my houseplants! I’d still take him over Rhiannon’s parents, though. I wish she never went through that. I want to give her a better life, and yet here I am with three years of black market experience and a bad last name. I can’t support a wife with Knockturn income.”

“Well, Hestia, maybe…” Astoria started, but before she even said the rest, her mood sank. “Maybe the war won’t turn out that way.”

Hestia furrowed her brow and dabbed more medicine on her mouth because she had almost said, “yeah, right.”

~

Astoria rolled back and forth on the floor, pretending to be under the Cruciatus Curse, during her last detention with Theodore. She had spotted Amycus in the Foe-Shard and promptly started screaming fake pain at the top of her lungs whilst Theodore held his wand out, casting nothing.

“He’s gone,” she said, and Theodore conjured her some water.

“Well, that’s the last time we’ll have to do that,” he said.

Astoria tidied her uniform and got back in her seat. It was also the last time they would be able to spend time with each other without raising alarm to their charade. Amycus would likely pick her to get pummelled by Flora in class more often, now that her detention sentence wasn’t taking care of her torture. The most often victims were Ginny, Luna, and Montel, but Imogen Stretton and Olivia Shardlow had never once been hit by a curse. Hestia was, thus far, exempt from Flora, but not from Amycus himself. Little did Amycus know, Astoria had taken every curse he forced Flora to cast into her grimoire notes, rich with mental images of him being the victim. Astoria had been a very, very good student.

“Time’s up,” Theodore said. “Now we’re mortal enemies.”

When they exited the classroom, they found Draco outside, leaning his back against the wall with his arms crossed and his wand out. It was funny to see him in that pose without Crabbe and Goyle flanking him.

“You look ready to ambush me. You know the curse was fake,” Theodore said, elbowing him.

They shoved each other back and forth a couple of times without ill will. Theodore ruffled his mop-top hair back in place and disappeared down the corridor. Theodore seemed fine. Draco was not.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Draco said.

Since they did talk multiple times every day, Astoria knew that the occasion was serious and asked him what was wrong. He hinted to go back to the classroom, and he shut the door behind him, casting more spells on it than they did for the Astronomy library. Then he cast the Imperturbable Charm on the room and removed his outer robe.

“Is your Mark burning?” she asked quietly.

Her quiet volume wasn’t necessary on account of the charm, but it didn’t seem like something that could be said at a normal volume anyway.

“No, it’s not,” Draco said. “How’s your hand?”

The scar on Astoria’s hand didn’t do anything except attract Alecto. It was an artistic remnant of dead magic. The injuries on her face lately were more concerning to her; Hestia had taught her how to hide them with foundation.

“You think I haven’t seen your hand, Astoria?”

“Well, it’s not _that_ noticeable.”

“I notice everything about you.”

Draco sat on top of the teacher’s desk. It could not have been clearer that something was on his mind, but as always, it evaded Astoria’s capabilities. He tilted his head at one of the desks, indicating that whatever news he had would best be received sitting down.

Astoria didn’t like the feeling of having a desk between them, so in spite of her manners, she joined him on top of the desk. He gave her a bittersweet smile and blinked his sky-grey eyes quickly.

“Bellatrix started writing Alecto,” he could barely choke out.

Draco’s choice of words did not elucidate the situation; of course Death Eaters would be in contact with one another.

“They’ve both concluded that the students are getting it too easy. Every so often, someone gets the Cruciatus, but it’s going to be happening more. Now Bellatrix wants students trained to do it to see who’s really got it in them. Alecto has been using Muggle Studies performance to draw up a list. They’re trying to make more Death Eaters.”

Astoria’s shoulders tensed.

“You’ve come to tell me I’m being blacklisted, and we have to break up or something?”

All the lines on Draco’s face sharpened.

“No.”

“Ah, you’ve come to tell me I’m whitelisted, and I have to swear my firstborn to the cause.”

“ _Astoria_ ,” Draco said sternly in response to her dark sense of humour.

“Let’s spit it out, then, Draco.”

“I don’t know how Alecto is going to categorise you. You’re with me, which should be worth something, but she also knows the details of your history with Rhiannon Clarke. I wanted to talk to you about the Cruciatus Curse. I… I hope this is not the case, but… God, I don’t even want to say it,” he struggled.

“I know about the curse. I’ve written reports. I know that if you’re under it long enough, you’ll get permanent dissociative amnesia –– I know about Neville’s parents. I know you have to be sadistic to cast it effectively, otherwise it will feel like a punch to the gut. I know it all.”

“No. You don’t know it all,” Draco said softly. “Please listen.”

Draco took both of Astoria’s hands.

“You can cast it for a long time without being a monster. If it’s between making someone else hurt and losing your own life, most everyone, including myself, does the former. Astoria…”

Draco slowly opened her palms and kissed the burn scar in her hand. He buried his face, and his blond hair fell into his eyes. Astoria brushed it out of the way and held him under the arm to steel him.

“You’re afraid you’ll be ordered to cast it on me. I know that, Draco.”

“I’d refuse, Astoria…” he cried. “Even if I was Imperiused, I’d fight it, I swear…”

“Draco, listen, if it’s between life and death, I’d rather you do what you’re told and get it over with. You could always do what Flora does. She casts everything as lightly as possible. I could fake the extra pain and pretend I’m losing it. I would never have you refuse an order at the cost of your life.”

“ _But I would never hurt you_!” he erupted. “ _What do you think I am_?”

He yanked her hands closer to his chest and cradled them, covering them with dripping tears that he had been holding in for longer than just today. His whole body quaked. Astoria knew his fears were justified, but she had to comfort him.

“Draco, we don’t know that they’d have you cast anything on me. Don’t you think they’d rather do it themselves?”

“I can’t let them. I can’t.”

“Listen, stop this. I’ve made my bed a long time ago. You need to stay out of anything that goes on between me and the Carrows. I was stuck with Alecto before. I’m not yours to save. I can do this. I’ve been practising magic almost as Dark as theirs, really. If they find that out, they might think that’s a good sign. I can really play it up, Draco. They are not going to make you cast that.”

Draco howled in his throat one final time. He seemed to think he needed get himself together for her sake, which was not true.

“Astoria, listen… Once Bellatrix and Alecto started writing… Amycus, he got involved… And I think Amycus told _Rabastan_ you were a Legilimens,” he trembled. “I don’t know how that happened, but that’s what’s been going round… that you’re a Legilimens… and I…”

“Draco,” Astoria said strongly, though her insides were absolutely pulverised with fear. “Draco, this is not your burden to bear.”

“How can you say that when you _know_?” he whispered. “You know. Don’t you? When you were in my head. You know how much I love you. Astoria, you’ve got to _know_ …”

Astoria freed her hands so she could touch his wet face. If it wouldn’t draw more of Rabastan’s attention, she wished that Draco were a Legilimens, so that he could cradle her feelings the way she had done in his head. But it wasn’t a fault of his. The way she held her feelings under her tongue was her own shortcoming. It stemmed from her fear of the war, and from the fear that such a small word would cheapen the unrefined glory of it all. But she knew the feeling well.

“Draco, I love you more deeply than words alone can tell you.”

She fixed the collar of his shirt and rubbed the back of his neck with her thumb. He was getting hot to the touch. He had really been worked up and terrified. She encouraged him closer, and his feet lifted a bit from the floor as he slid to face her on the desk. His shoulders fell to her touch.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for every time I made you upset. I’m sorry for everything I’ve done. I’m sorry for everything, Astoria.”

It was a wonderful thing to hear from Draco Malfoy.

“I forgive you, Draco,” she soothed, keeping his hair out of his face every time it bothered him. She admired his eyes, though they were red and wet. She admired the contrast of his white-blond hair on her fingers. She kept caressing his neck, as it was patchy and red. He was flushed with anxiety and love, and she pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. He liked the cool feeling and leaned into it. Draco’s lips had always been an easy shape to catch. She merely wished that she had Draco in a more peaceful environment than the Alchemy room. His school bag was in her way, the place was cold, and the desk was hard.

Astoria moved his things haphazardly and spilled them on the desk. He moved to help her, but her gaze had already been polluted from his beauty, and when she saw the fresh ink bottle and his unique, white peacock-feather quills, she halted him. She drew those two items towards her, shoving the rest of his things back into the bag and lowering it to the floor. Draco, still trying to relax, gave her a curious look. She had been thinking some curious things herself, and the space he now gave her was quite unwelcome. She drew him towards her again.

“I never wrote my lines for detention.”

She barely heard herself say it, but Draco heard her clearly and froze to the spot. He was staring at her, but it was not enough –– she meant to hypnotise him. She wrapped her scarred hand round the side of his waist and drew his soft jumper into her hands, making a signalling tug. Draco did not break eye contact except to pull the garment over him. She hoisted herself entirely onto the desk, sat up on her ankles, and undid his stuffy tie. She put her mouth on his now-free neck and grabbed the cuff of his sleeve. She unbuttoned it and rolled it up –– there was that accursed brand burned on his skin, but Draco didn’t belong to anyone but her.

He picked at his fingers with his thumb, and the muscles in his wrist tensed in waves. He was so pale that he had funny blue spiderwebs on the soft side of his arm. Astoria uncorked the ink bottle, and suddenly there was a deep scent of it. She dipped the nib of the quill in, and Draco averted his eyes from her, but by no means did he avert his free hand.

She took the nib to his wrist, watching his anxious fingers relax and curl. Rather than saying what she wanted to, she wrote the words on him slowly, to tickle him and let him feel the ink.

“Risky, don’t you think?” he questioned.

“If it was going to do something to your Mark, you would have stopped me by now,” she said. “There’s no magic in this quill like there is in your hands.”

“I don’t know, Astoria…” Draco said to the floor with a shy smile. He was trying to give her a little scare. “What if touching my Mark with that quill _does_ do something? Aren’t we tempting more than fate here?”

“Don’t you ever wash your arm in the shower?” she chuckled. “How is this different from soap and water?”

He breathed in deeply.

“Well, this is dirtying me.”

“I want it to,” Astoria said, and Draco exhaled a curse into her ear.

Astoria continued tickling him with her calligraphy, blowing on the ink to dry it as she went and making his fair hair stand on end. She was winning him already, and he couldn’t even see what she was writing yet. She reached the Dark Mark and disinhibited herself, scrawling across it with a wonderful sense of graffiti and defiance. Draco’s smile twisted. He was as glad as she was to see the Mark defaced and bisected by written declarations of longing. Astoria didn’t stop there. She had so much to say. She covered him with prose until the ink bled heavily onto his white shirt, then back onto hers.


	18. Descent of the Vultures

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 18 - "Your Love is Killing Me" by Sharon van Etten
> 
> The issue of stalking is covered in this story. To learn more about stalking resources, I would suggest searching for laws, i.e., "stalking law [your country/district]".
> 
> The content of the Howler letters was reworked into Wizard-y language, and made more violent, based on serial text messages I received from an ex ages ago, not long after I started a fanfic that became part 1 of this series. Before we really went downhill, she ridiculed me (more than a joking amount) for being a nerd for Harry Potter. She found it most embarassing that I wrote fanfiction. I stopped writing for a long time because of her. As I'm sure you can tell, her distaste for my writing was the least of our problems. Granted, she's not the sole inspiration for Rabastan's character. He has _lots_ going on.
> 
> There are several not-so-sunny personal themes in this fanfic as a whole, and it's been therapeutic for me. I understand that it may be just the opposite to some readers, especially in the upcoming story arc, so please read with discretion. Thank you!
> 
> **Content warnings: past suicidal ideation (mentioned), sexual harassment, self-harm threats, animal death (mentioned), profuse coarse language**

Astoria rubbed her eyes after reading the fourth volume of _Legilimency in Practice_ , which she had not finished last year. Professor Sinistra had kept it from her for unknown (but probably Alecto-related) reasons, and finally gave it to her in late November to finish. Even though it was not intended to be, the fourth volume was the last full book in the series. It was excruciating to get through, since the book had plenty of Occlumency itself. Astoria gave up for the evening and walked up Astronomy Tower, greeting the Bloody Baron on her ascent.

As far as Astoria’s own Occlumency, she had been pushing herself to hide her performance of Dark magic from Professor Sinistra. Yet when she was helping the Professor prepare equipment for the younger students, Astoria realised that her attempts at Occlumency had not worked. Professor Sinistra discovered that she and Draco often practised duelling with Dark magic. It was one of the proudest accomplishments Astoria had, but it wasn’t something she could openly share.

Professor Sinistra made a moment’s eye contact with Astoria and balled up her cornrows into a bun before hunching over an astrolabe. Astoria was making sure the alidades tilted smoothly, but she was on edge about what the professor might say, and fumbled with the equipment in the way that would make the professor cringe. Astoria felt a chill behind her ear and turned back to Professor Sinistra.

“Have I set so terrible an example for you, Astoria?” she murmured rhetorically.

The snow outside turned to sleet and was hitting the windows with gentle taps. No one trusted Astoria to do anything right, especially by way of doing something wrong. At least Professor Sinistra wasn’t currently sitting her down and staring at her. She was busy cutting large pieces of parchment for the students.

“Is it your fear? Your sense of inefficacy?” the professor questioned. “What turned you to the Arts?”

Astoria was dumbfounded that Professor Sinistra had no words of scorn on her tongue. She remembered a time when she had been angry at the professor for opening up the world of Legilimency to her when it was considered Dark by many. Back then, Astoria had thought herself so innocent, and yet here she was.

“Well, I _am_ afraid,” Astoria admitted. “Why should I have to rely on charms from my third year when Amycus has an arsenal of magic older than the English language?”

“I never said you should have to,” Professor Sinistra responded.

Astoria cast a Heating Charm on each of the windows to melt the sleet on the outside.

“If you don’t mind… what turned you to the Arts, Professor?” she asked without looking at her.

“Nothing noble, for by that point, I had no one to protect. I felt entitled to become what everyone thought of me anyway. Would you care to help me clear the sky, dear?”

Astoria bit the inside of her cheek. She had not expected the abrupt change in subject and felt the need to justify herself further.

“Er, Professor…”

“I’m neither going to reassure nor condone you,” Professor Sinistra said ascetically. “I don’t believe you should pursue the Arts, but I’m a hypocrite. How could I tell you to ‘do as I say, not as I do?’ You’re old enough to make your own choices. At least this blasted war has made you old enough.”

She did not wait for Astoria to climb to the top of the tower and go out to the winter. Astoria drew her robes and followed her, helping her fight heavy snow clouds before nightfall. Up there in the wind, the witches were painfully aware of the five dementors floating round the pinnacles, preventing any ideas of broom flight. The dementors were high, and their presence was seen more than felt, but Astoria asked if she could practise her Patronus before they went back inside.

“What a silly question, dear.”

On account of not being near the wraiths, Astoria did not have much trouble casting her Patronus. She knew that if she were closer, though, it would probably be incorporeal, and if she grew frightened, it might not work at all.

“Professor McGonagall was understandably shaken after seeing the dementor Kiss Jonah,” Professor Sinistra said solemnly. “I admit we can’t bring ourselves to talk to each other, but I hear she can now cast multiple Patronuses. It is nearly unheard of. She must have worked tirelessly for the sake of the students. I would do the same if I could, Astoria.”

The professor’s hands were folded in her sleeves, and the light from Astoria’s Patronus seemed not to reach her eyes beneath her heavy lashes. Astoria wondered if the professor might actually be seeking reassurance from _her_.

“I know you would, Professor,” she said, trying to set her jaw with some authority.

In that moment, even though she knew it was not so, she felt closer to a respected equal than a hapless student. She had always seen Professor Sinistra as someone to impress, though, and that would never change, even when the professor needed a boost of confidence. She had instilled confidence one-thousand times over in Astoria. Without Professor Sinistra’s belief in her, Astoria would have fallen further behind at school, slipped through the cracks of her magical education, and ultimately died when the Death Eaters attacked Quennell Park. It might have seemed like a dramatic way to interpret the witch’s influence on her, but Astoria knew it was true. Her skills never would have blossomed without someone believing in her.

“You’ve done everything for me,” Astoria said, her breath showing in the cold night.

Professor Sinistra’s eyes traced a smooth pursuit of the dementors above.

“There were times when the thought of you waiting for my class to start kept me going, Astoria. I would picture you unfolding your maps and wondering where I was with as much detail as I could. And that kept me.”

The meaning of Professor Sinistra’s words cut through Astoria worse than anything the dementors above could ever hope to do.

“Professor, I…” Astoria mustered. “I know this isn’t the same, but I felt… When I was left alone at Quennell Park, I felt, you know, it wouldn’t matter either way if I lived or… well, I know it’s not the same, I’m sorry…”

“Please come to me if you ever feel that way again, Astoria,” she said sincerely.

“You too, Professor,” Astoria said, but her voice seemed to shrink and be robbed of power in the greater witch’s presence.

Professor Sinistra drew her long sleeves to her face. She made no sound. Astoria considered walking her Patronus closer to her to help her feel better, but at some deeper level, she understood that the professor needed to express tears naturally.

“I know Alecto had you all reading that Skeeter book, and I know it upset you, Astoria. Dumbledore’s memory is what keeps many fighting on the right side in this war, and to have that memory tarnished has affected people greatly. When he was very young, Dumbledore was involved with someone who would later become a Dark wizard. He buried this part of his past thoroughly, but he unearthed it, for me, when Jonah was first incarcerated. I was nineteen, and I felt that no one would ever understand me. Dumbledore understood. He had the same feelings of shame and betrayal that I did. Dumbledore was not an evil man. I’d like to think I am not so evil, either.”

“You’re not evil at all! What a silly thing to say, Professor!” Astoria reassured, but she felt unhelpful in the scope of the professor’s distress. Professor Sinistra had always been so important to her, though she was more like family now than ever. Astoria had once thought it pitiable that Rhiannon had relied so closely on her teachers in the absence of any family. How wrong she had been. Family need not be bonded by blood.

“M-May I join you for Christmas?” Astoria asked, and the smile she received back broke through myriad layers of shell and shroud.

Before the Christmas holidays, the Slytherins represented the largest group of students still allowed to go to Hogsmeade. Many members of Dumbledore’s Army had been identified due to their various antics and D.A.D.A. rescue missions, and they had had more than just Hogsmeade privileges revoked. Astoria sometimes wished she were fighting alongside them properly, although she could not shake the attitude that they were reckless and stupid. For what it was worth, Astoria’s lack of overt resistance won her another date with Draco in Hogsmeade, and she took what she could get. Seeing Draco’s idea of fashionable winter hats was a special kind of joy. They sat outside the not-so-romantic Hog’s Head whilst Hestia swindled the Death Eaters inside with antiemetic potions that had a convenient side-effect of making one hanker for the taste of more potion.

“I was going to buy you outrageously expensive jewellery for Christmas since that’s been my concept of girls from birth,” Draco joked. “That’s niffler-ish behaviour, now that I think about it. ‘Give her something shiny.’”

“I do enjoy jewellery, but there are more important things,” Astoria said, gently swinging his hands.

“Well, this is our first Christmas together, so I wanted to do something special,” he stalled the reveal of the gift.

“It doesn’t feel like our first, does it?” she reminisced.

Draco’s nose and ears turned bright red against his pale face and the snow surrounding them. He presented her with a small box covered in red wrapping paper that had a shimmering snowflake pattern. When Astoria shook the box, the snowflakes on the wrapping paper became real and gently fell to the ground. She felt her blush betray her when she opened the box; Draco had placed an Undetectable Extension Charm on it and packed it full.

“It has everything I thought you’d be tired of going without,” he said.

Even though some of the gifts hinted at the tragedy she had gone through (hair potions and fuzzy socks she normally would have _had_ ), she was so grateful to have these items because they had been bought with care. The box was also packed with sweets and snacks. She was relieved that everything was within reason, since she had only been able to scrounge for things that were free for him. She had made him a whole case’s worth of raspberryade and fruit ciders in the potions laboratory with her roommates. She had also prepared squares of parchment with craft spells to work as origami paper, since that had been one of his quirky hobbies before everything went to the dogs. The fun of it was that Draco could fold the paper into animals, and they would speak the messages secretly charmed inside the paper. She tried to include a combination dirty jokes and exceedingly lame groaners. Draco was completely delighted and tried one out, folding it into a frog.

“Do you know that eating flies will help you finish your homework sooner?” the frog croaked.

“And why is that?” Draco asked the frog in his hand, looking up at Astoria.

“Time’s fun when you’re having flies!” said the frog, and it leapt out of his hand to go terrorise others with its joke.

“That was terrible, Astoria,” Draco laughed. “Also, I have a confession.”

He drew a small box from his pocket, and Astoria put her hand on her forehead.

“Oh, no, Draco! No, you––”

“I’m a niffler. I couldn’t overcome it. I had to present you with something shiny.”

It was a beautiful hair ornament to be worn on the back of the head. It depicted one of the more complicated shapes of balsam flowers, and it had a glittering magical spiderweb between the two floral pieces that would drape over clamped hair. Astoria was amazed at its uniqueness and thanked him sincerely. She would have taken off her hat for it if not for the cold, which he perfectly understood.

“Draco, really, I’d get you anything in the world if I could,” she said embarrassedly.

“Stop that. I did this because I wanted to. Plus, I’m still fascinated with that cursed Snitch you got for me.”

“The whole point was that it wasn’t cursed!” Astoria insisted, and he poked her on the nose.

“You know, one day I’d like your room to be filled with things from me,” he said. “If I run out of ideas, I’ll resort to getting your more gross sweets.”

“If you would _try_ a sugared violet,” she said dramatically.

Without warning, Draco drew his wand, Shrunk all their gifts into his pockets, Levitated her into his arms, and started running down High Street.

“Where are we _going_?” she shrieked as she held on for dear life. “You should have charmed my weight lighter to carry me like this!”

“I’m trying to be tough, Astoria. Let me have my moment,” he grinned against the top of her head.

He slowed down towards the end of the street and set her back on her feet again. She fixed his scarf and coat.

“Oh dear,” she said as she followed the line of his gaze to a huge, fluffy snow pile.

“According to the Ministry, I’m responsible enough to Apparate and own property. Thus, I would never do as childish an activity as jumping into snow,” he said, sticking his cold red nose in the air. “Plus, I’m a gentleman. Ladies first.”

The snow was rudely tempting. It stood as tall as Astoria’s elbows. She could jump into it effortlessly and use the Hot-Air Charm to warm away any regrets.

“What’s holding you back?” Draco teased. “Would you like an Impervius Charm on your clothes?”

“Impervius Charms are for losers,” Astoria said, and she jumped into the cold snow.

It got past her scarf and on her face and neck, which was very cold, but it had been an unshakable opportunity. Draco jumped next to her and lost his hat. She scattered some powdery snow onto the top of his head, and he shook it off with a shiver. He smacked his hand onto the snow, sending it flying upwards onto her, and they soon broke into a snowball fight.

Then Draco left for home the next night, and Astoria couldn’t sleep. He had been happy. He had been right there by her side and happy, and now he was gone. Christmas holiday with Voldemort in his house… it was too dire to imagine.

Flora and Hestia had their own flavour of nightmare awaiting them at the holiday; Astoria had to spend her last afternoon in the castle “decontaminating” the Muggle Studies classroom with one-half of the problem. Flora and Hestia were cleaning the Dark Arts classroom with the other half.

“I clean every night, but I want it extra clean for when term starts back up,” said Alecto, wringing her hands as she watched Astoria walk to the back of the room to Scour the desks.

Astoria didn’t humour her with a response. She just did what she was told to avoid any curses.

“That’s… that’s a lovely hairpiece,” said Alecto after silence.

Astoria watched the witch over her shoulder and kept cleaning desks that were not dirty.

“What is it, purple rubies?”

Astoria blinked away the soapy sting of the charm bubbling up in the air.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve a pair of opal hatpins.”

Astoria moved to the next row of desks and whispered, “ _Scourgify_.”

“I cried when I got ’em because they were much too good a gift. I had nothing good enough to wear ’em with,” Alecto told the wall. “Nowhere to wear them to. I –– I put ’em in a thin vase just so I could see and appreciate them. I’d absolutely no excuse for gettin’ a gift that nice.”

Alecto shook her head and choked back tears. The ability to have a normal conversation was in there somewhere, bottled underneath striped layers of rainbow sand that aren’t pretty once they mix.

“Well, this doesn’t go with my uniform at all,” Astoria said, moving to the next desk.

Alecto snorted a small laugh. It only lasted a second, but the sound seemed to hang for several minutes.

“You don’t have a home to go to for Christmas no more,” said Alecto.

“ _Scourgify_ ,” whispered Astoria.

“If you stayed at school, your parents would wonder where you were, right? They’d send you an owl.”

Astoria looked up but didn’t play along. Alecto was swinging her feet as she sat atop her desk.

“We didn’t ever get owls from our Mum and Dad. Just Grandmother. Well, fourth year, I said, let’s see what happens if we don’t come home for the holiday. If they’ll write us.”

Astoria dried the next desk and said the next part first, “They didn’t write.”

Alecto bit her lip once her sentence was filled.

“That had to be hard,” Astoria added, and Alecto wiped the shock out of her eyes.

“Grandmother didn’t write either, because she was losin’ her mind towards the end and didn’t know it was December. Couldn’t string the words together much by then. And when –– when we was back in a couple months anyway –– for good –– she thought it was winter holiday then. And I –– I couldn’t tell her. Because she still loved us.”

Alecto rubbed her arms with the ghost of her grandmother’s hug. She started Scouring the desks, not to help Astoria with the mandated chore, but to have something to do besides ruminate. Astoria had no problem with that, thinking she would get out of this room sooner with two people on the job. That was until they met in the middle and ended up at the same desk. Alecto studied Astoria like she was an insect in a jar.

“Come home with us tonight for the holiday.”

Astoria’s swallow was dry. She opened her mouth, but Alecto kept piling on words:-

“Flora and Hestia would like it.”

“I––”

“We have the room. Won’t be like the hotel.”

Astoria shook her head, “I––”

“Ain’t good to be in the castle alone.”

“I’m––”

“You’re not going home with Malfoy, are you? That’ll be worse. Don’t do that.”

“I’m not.”

Alecto’s Scouring spell had got out of control, and the suds and water rolled off the desk and onto her shoes. She shook her foot.

“…You got other plans, Astoria?”

“I’m already going home with somebody.”

The suds piled up to Astoria’s shoes and wettened her socks.

“It’s Sinistra… She mothers you,” Alecto’s voice roiled round the words.

Astoria wiped the floor as quickly as she could and scuttled to the door.

“Not a good idea to stay with her either, Astoria,” said Alecto.

~

It took Professor Sinistra ten minutes to undo all of the protective enchantments on her house to get inside, and five minutes to put them all back, so when Snape came calling, she made an exasperated groan. Astoria was sitting on Uncle Faunus’s suitcase, holding the cage with the Doppelvanga on her lap. It was one of the few places to sit that wasn’t a pile of newspapers, but it wasn’t even, and the bird was shifting and fluttering his wings. Astoria set him on the floor and glared into the entrance hall. She was offended that Snape would visit. After being her Head of House for three years, Snape now ignored his students at all costs and played the role of a devoted Death Eater. Astoria had once cried on the wizard’s shoulder; now she wanted to spit in his eye.

“Why would you let him in?” Astoria snapped as she watched Professor Sinistra unthread the house’s enchantments again.

“He would not come without good cause,” the professor said firmly.

“You were the one who told me not to make excuses for him.”

“That is so you don’t get comfortable at school, since he can no longer be a source of help to you,” Professor Sinistra said, and she got the door unlocked.

Snape strode through the threshold with a shake in his shoulders. He removed his snow-speckled hat, but not his cloak. His dark eyes scanned the room that Professor Sinistra and Astoria had barely had a chance to light.

“What a mess,” Snape scoffed.

“WHAT A MESS! WHAT A MESS!” called the Doppelvanga excitedly.

Snape sneered at the bird, and, for the hundredth time since school had started, ignored Astoria’s existence.

“Our Doppelvanga thinks ‘What A Mess’ is your name, Severus,” Professor Sinistra grinned, and Snape sighed.

“Where might I find a place in here to sit?”

“The kitchen is fairly clean, you know,” Professor Sinistra said pointedly.

Snape tripped over Crouch’s shoes on his way down the entrance hall, but Professor Sinistra charmed the shoes right back into place rather than help Snape recover from the tumble. They went into the kitchen, and it did not take long for Astoria to realise that they had cast an Imperturbable Charm on the room so that she wouldn’t hear their conversation. Astoria doubted it had been Professor Sinistra’s idea, since she knew how much Astoria hated her world being censored.

She watched the Doppelvanga preen its shimmering gold and fluffy cerulean feathers. He wasn’t fond of his small travelling cage since his long tail feathers curled on the bottom, but Astoria would have had to go through the kitchen to put him in his bigger cage.

“What a mess!” said the bird.

“Yeah, what a mess,” said Astoria.

“Rabbystan,” said the bird after another moment in a nasally imitation of Snape.

“What?”

“Whot? Whot?” mimicked the bird in Astoria’s voice.

Astoria studied the Doppelvanga closely. His head cocked all over rapidly, and he tilted his body toward the kitchen. Astoria understood: the Imperturbable Charm did not affect the bird! She remained perfectly quiet to try to get snippets of the conversation blocked to her ears with magic.

“Rabbystan, Rabbystan,” said the bird in Snape’s voice again.

_Rabastan what_?

“Dark Lord! Rabbystan.”

_Yes_ , _what about them you silly bird_?

“Imbeciles,” squawked the bird in Professor Sinistra’s voice.

_Well_ , _I know that part_.

The Doppelvanga liked saying “imbeciles” and “what a mess” so much that Astoria wasn’t able to get more of the conversation. She knew a Dark spell that would crack the Imperturbable Charm like glass, but decided not to cause trouble for Professor Sinistra. Snape eventually lifted the charm himself and strode out of the kitchen, minding Crouch’s shoes this time.

“What a mess! What a mess!” called the bird.

Snape ignored the Doppelvanga and Astoria to the best of his ability and left the house. Whilst Professor Sinistra replaced the enchantments on the house, she considerately explained what had transpired in the kitchen.

“If the Howlers didn’t give away the hint, Rabastan has been obsessing over me, and he has recently pleaded with Riddle to forcibly enlist me.”

Professor Sinistra’s calm tone impeded Astoria’s onslaught of worry.

“Since I have Dark magic that might be useful, Riddle asked Severus to determine if I might yet regret my battle at Azkaban and champion the cause my husband died for. Well, seeing as I am a _completely_ maladjusted, disconsolate widow on my _downward spiral_ ,” Professor Sinistra said, advertising the state of her house with a wave of her arm, “Severus _regretted_ to inform me that I’m not Death Eater material, and he’s reporting my woeful instability to Riddle.”

Astoria followed her subterfuge, but had one point of contention:-

“How will that work? The Lestranges are raving mad, and he uses them!”

“Oh, but Astoria, I can scarcely lift my wand for anything more than my class, right? How could I possibly be of _use_ to the _Dark Lord_ when it takes me three hours to get out of bed?” Professor Sinistra groaned dramatically, then tapped the side of her nose.

Professor Sinistra didn’t have a December holiday, but before Christmas Eve, she purchased a wily tree with a curlicue trunk at Dogweed and Deathcaps to decorate. Together, Astoria and the professor conjured blinking, glittering ornaments of all colours and shapes, and dangled them amongst the fingerlike branches. It was the funniest looking Christmas tree Astoria had ever seen. There wasn’t a pointed tip at the top of the tree, so Astoria used a Sticking Charm (responsibly) to set a twinkling blue star on the crown of the leaves. She, Winky, and the professor prepared a nice dinner that evening and paid no mind to the patrolling Death Eaters outside.

Professor Sinistra doubled down on boggart-hunting in her house so that Astoria wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown over one again, but even with the boggarts gone, there were worse things happening outside the house. When they had been at the school, Professor Sinistra could see the daily Howlers from Rabastan coming from a long distance away. With a few horribly memorable exceptions, the professor was able to quickly curse them and protect both herself and the rest of the school from hearing their content. Now that the owls were coming right outside the window, there was nothing that could be done without removing the protective enchantments, and that would have been more dangerous than the letters themselves. Without set delivery times, the letters came at terrible hours and rang throughout the whole yard. Sometimes, there were so many in succession that multiple owls were sent, and when Astoria recognised Draco’s eagle owl being used for this purpose, her blood boiled, but she couldn’t go outside to prevent the owl from rushing back to Malfoy Manor.

Rabastan’s messages had the most twisted, counter-intuitive messages. Rabastan had never lived down the perceived slight of Professor Sinistra’s romantic rejection, and by the time maturity and distance might have healed him, he had been thrown in prison, where he could mull on it every day he saw her visit her similarly incarcerated husband. Inexplicably, Rabastan seemed to be stuck between wanting to be intimately involved with Professor Sinistra and wanting to kill her. Professor Sinistra did the right thing by not replying to Rabastan and feeding his flame, but that didn’t make the Howlers stop. The night before school would start up again, Rabastan sent no fewer than six Howlers. Astoria could not sleep because the Howlers made it sound like Rabastan himself was hovering outside the windows. One letter screeched:-

> “I know why you’re not replying, Aurora. You’re in love with some patsy again. Is it another Barty replacement like Snape was? I hear. I watch. I know. You don’t give a damn about me. Honestly, you’re not worth any of what I’ve done to myself. You’re not worth a thing. With the way you treat me now, you’re not worth it one bit. I gave up too much for you to be in this position right now. You haven’t sent me a single letter since I got out of prison. You didn’t send me a single letter when I was _in_ prison. Rodolphus got dozens of letters each day from witches who wanted him. Rodolphus was big and strong and handsome. What was I? I was nothing.
> 
> I guess you’re avoiding me from now on. Or, rather, perhaps you’re laughing away staring at these Howlers thinking ‘ha ha ha I wonder what he’s thinking since I’m not writing him back!’ or something of the sort? You’re so selfish. I don’t give a fuck what you say or don’t say. I don’t give a fuck when you think this isn’t love. I know what love is. You _never_ really stop completely loving someone. Did you ever love me? I was never good enough anyway. You took so much of my time I can’t get back.
> 
> I have to admit, I’ll be so lonely without you. You were the only person I ever felt desire for, and I used to think about you twenty-four/seven. To be honest, I still do. I hate you. I’m starting anew and, this time, without you involved.”

Rabastan’s declaration that he was moving on was unfortunately empty, as only minutes later, Astoria heard another Howler come in.

> “I’m sorry for blowing up at you. Today’s been awful... seriously, fuck everything. Did all of my letters send throughout the fall term? Because you didn’t reply to anything. I guess they must have… I got all this Howler paper for you. I’ve been thinking about who you must want now that your husband is dead-dead. Is it still Snape? You know what, don’t even tell me who it is. I hear. I watch. I know. I don’t care. Apparently, I keep waking Bella up with my ‘hysterics’ and she cursed me, and I bet that makes you happy. I bet you like my pain. I wish it was _you_ cursing me, because I’d want to see the look in your eyes. Would that be the best way to get your attention? Do you hate me? I kind of hate you, Aurora. Forget kind of. I really, really do. Do you even care? Are you going to keep ignoring me? That’ll just make me hate you more. You don’t want that, trust me.”

He took back that one, too, only to repeat himself.

> “Aurora, I wrote that on impulse, so Merlin knows what's true now or not, but I assume most of it isn’t! That’s why I hate you –– you’re going to hold it against me even though I’m explaining it was on impulse! You hold everything against me except your perfect body! By the way, as far as my body goes, I’ve been having a ton of pain in my abdomen lately. You did this. Because I can’t function without you. It’s just like in school. You ignored me. I broke three quills in Transfiguration just trying to get your attention, but _no_ , let’s talk to Glenda about your amazing, soon-to-be date. What use is a _dead_ man, Aurora? He’s been dead over and over again. I’m alive. I never died. I’d work so nicely for you. Oh, by the way, I don’t give a shit about the quills I broke. And I guess my falling ill is a good thing, since I can’t possibly live like this. I’m stuck in a house that has nothing left for me, completely alone, on the verge of losing my mind. I’m so heartbroken. You don’t know what it’s like to be completely unattractive and unloved. I came into this world as an accident nine years after Rodolphus, so everybody already loved him, and nobody wanted me, and nobody ever _ended up_ wanting me! Obviously, something is very fucked up with me because no one likes me! Fuck everything. I want to die, and when I do, it will be peace.”

Rabastan’s intent of revealing such a feeling soon became clear with his next Howler. He had meant it as a manipulation tactic.

> “Aurora, I know you heard my Howler and you heard the pain in my voice. And you did nothing. You did nothing. I could have hurt myself, and you did nothing. Why don’t you want me? I hate you so much I feel ill. I’ve been having palpitations. Damn it, I’m about to have my nightly break down about you so goodnight. I love you. I know you won’t say it back. You prefer your men fucking dead! Would you like me if I were dead? Would you even miss me? No, you wouldn’t, you liar!
> 
> Why do I even bother looking good now? I only ever cared if you thought I was attractive, but now it doesn’t matter. I’ve been trying to wipe Azkaban off my face and gain some weight back from the dementors just so I could scoop you up in my arms. I’m not good enough. What are you doing this weekend? I could give you a weekend you’d never forget. Can you please come see me tonight? Can you please stay overnight? I have my own space, they won’t hear us… Wait, are you embarrassed? Would you be embarrassed about something like that? Is it only because it’d be with _me_? I bet you wouldn’t be embarrassed if it was with somebody that wasn’t me. I bet I could Transfigure into a pretty convincing Barty if you’d be interested. It’s not the same as Polyjuice Potion so I won’t have his stupid voice, but would you want me if I looked more like him? If you’re going to make that kind of demand on me, I have to request that you fix your eyebrows. I don’t like your eyebrows. It’s like you don’t even try. I also think you should do something else with your hair for a change. I don’t think that this will work between us if you’re not willing to keep up your appearance when I am clearly making the offer to change mine so drastically. Okay, maybe can I come to see you? I guess some time with you is better than none! I promise I won’t hurt you! I won’t hurt you. I want to, though! What if I promise to be good?”

For as ill as Rabastan claimed to be, it was Astoria who was growing genuinely nauseated, but still more Howlers exploded against the windows.

> “You were being really bitchy about me to Snape. I hear. I watch. I know. I love you, though. I still love you. You’re so awful for me. I don’t know why I’m stupid enough to love you. This relationship isn’t going to work if you don’t talk to me, Aurora! It wouldn’t work in the long term. I bet I would be shunned for getting with a filthy little blood-traitor. Well, sometimes I think it’s that _forbidden part of you_ that I want. Like I want to _purify you and fix it_ , fix that broken part of you. You’re _very_ impure. I’ve seen you be unfaithful to your husband when you took a drink from Glenda’s goblet before. It was our seventh year, too, and you were engaged. Drinking from someone’s drink is _indirect kissing_. Indirect kissing. Didn’t you know that? And you did that with a _half-breed_? Why would your dirty your perfect lips on half-bred, bloody vampire spit? Also, are you fucking deaf? You act like you don’t hear any of my Howlers. I don’t want a deaf, defective wife! So fuck off!”

Again, Rabastan changed his mind by the next Howler.

> “Why do you ignore my letters like you think I’d hurt you? You’re not deaf; you’re just pretending you are! I really want you here with me right now, but what’s the point if you don’t want me. I guess you already know my feelings and don’t need a reminder. Why didn’t I realise it earlier, and not act selfishly, and end up losing the best thing that ever happened to me? Oh, I know. Because you never ‘happened.’
> 
> Do you think I don’t know why you didn’t take your husband’s name? It wasn’t his stupid, dramatic gripes about his father’s name –– it was because you wanted me all along. I hated seeing Barty jump round like he’s fucking king of the world. I don’t give a fuck about him. You don’t either. _You’d take my name_. I know you would, even though it would make it obvious what we really are. But it’s like I’m not allowed to be intimate. Sometimes I really want to kill you, Aurora. Oh, I want you so bad. I’m so lonely tonight I can’t bear it. Don’t you ever think about me, just lying here all alone? No, probably not. I bet you’re looking at the stars for the eight billionth, nine millionth, three-hundred thousandth and four-hundred fifty-second time. They’re the fucking same, Aurora! You’re a liar when you act like they’re interesting! You need a real wizard for something interesting! I can be so, so, so, so interesting to you! I have killed thirty-nine people, and none of them are you! Don’t you feel special? Thirty-nine is an odd number, though! I really need you here with me!”

Professor Sinistra hobbled into Astoria’s room to get her. It was then that Astoria felt how tightly she had been gripping her blankets.

“We shall go further inside where we won’t hear this rubbish,” said the professor.

Astoria grabbed her pillow and started rolling up her blanket.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that, dear. I’ve Duplicated our rooms further in. The only difference is that the windows face the interior and will look into one of the halls. We’ll also be right across from each other this time. We’ll stay there until you’re ready for breakfast, and then I’ll move the rooms again so we can get downstairs.”

Astoria followed Professor Sinistra closely as she weaved through dark, zigzagging hallways that Astoria had never known were there. Yet Astoria didn’t mind being in a semi-enclosed space given the circumstances, and she gladly slept in her Duplicate room where no sound reached. Professor Sinistra saw to it that Astoria was settled in.

“Are _you_ okay, Professor?” Astoria asked.

Professor Sinistra looked at her darkly.

“On top of getting my husband involved with You-Know-Who in the first place, Rabastan has always been like this. To me, his Howlers are simply like a neighbour with a loud dog, but I know they say frightening things, and I didn’t want you to hear his murderous screaming. He isn’t exactly the eligible bachelor he claims, is he?”

Astoria didn’t know if she should fake a laugh or not.

“Do you know why he sends only Howlers and never letters?”

“Well, he probably wants to keep you awake all night,” Astoria surmised. “It’s harassing enough as it is, but I’m sure he’s picking this late hour to keep you up…”

“That’s true, but he also cannot spell. He spells everything phonetically. Now, if he weren’t such a terrible person, I wouldn’t say such things, but Severus can’t understand written correspondence with Rabastan. So Severus gets about a third of the Howlers that I do. I don’t think Rabastan ever brags to Severus about what a _big, bad wizard_ he is, though,” Professor Sinistra shrugged and walked to her room.

With their rooms now across from one another’s, Astoria saw that the professor’s ceiling was charmed perfectly to look like the night sky. She couldn’t sleep at first, so she started reciting stars in her head until it worked.

This was the worst possible year to have to come back to school from Christmas holiday. Word spread that Luna Lovegood had been kidnapped by Death Eaters on the Hogwarts Express. It was more than the usual tragic rumour; there were eyewitnesses, one of whom was Ernie Macmillan. He had been badly cursed for trying to intervene and was seen using crutches.

Draco’s response to his traumatic time at home was to kick everyone out of his dormitory and bring Astoria there. The Slytherin boys’ dorms were set up the same way the girls’ dorms were. The beds were in a line against the same wall, and the dressers were opposite. Unlike Astoria’s dorm, there was plenty more space in the middle, but since it was the first night back, luggage was everywhere. There wasn’t much to look at except some Quidditch posters, though, since boys didn’t do much decorating. The main feature was Crabbe’s, Goyle’s, and Theodore’s dirty clothes from before the holiday, awaiting the House-elves’ laundering. Astoria knew which bed was Theodore’s straight away, since there was long, black hair on the pillow and anxiously pulled, but not yet Mended, threads in his blanket. Draco’s and Zabini’s areas weren’t as messy as the other boys’. Draco sat on his bed and threw himself back with a thud. Astoria sat at his desk, looking at his assortment of peacock-feather quills, his school planner, and the chocolate wrappers he had turned into origami snakes.

“Rabastan killed my owl,” Draco told the ceiling.

Astoria winced. She had just seen the owl last night. Rabastan was irrevocably evil for torturing and killing people, but hurting animals was an even deeper kind of disgusting. Draco was trying to bear it with a stiff upper lip, but that was his pet.

“I’m so sorry, Draco. I remember what a beautiful owl it was. What was your owl’s name?” she asked, trying to help Draco cope with the loss.

“Odysseus. He could go anywhere,” Draco said, once again to the ceiling.

“That’s a nice name. I had an owl named Twinkles, which doesn’t sound as cool.”

Draco grunted, then fell quiet for a while. Astoria fiddled with the origami snakes.

“Rabastan likes to kill birds because ‘wings represent freedom’ or something, and he was in Azkaban and had ‘no wings’… I don’t bloody know. He raved on about it for half an hour until Bellatrix cursed him for the umpteenth time last night. Listen, I hate Bellatrix, but I’ve never been happier to have her round.”

“He deserves more than some curses for what he’s done to others’ lives,” Astoria remarked.

“Yeah. Erm. Well. Odysseus didn’t have any pain, at least. Rabastan used the Killing Curse, not something messed up.”

“I’m relieved he didn’t feel it. The Killing Curse is messed up, though.”

“Well, you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do. I’m sorry, Draco. I’m sorry you even have to be near those people.”

“I don’t want it to be for much longer. I’m of age, so once the Dark Lord secures his forces or wins the war or whatever, I’m out of that house. If the Lestranges want the manor so badly, they can have it. Mother and Father and I are going to live somewhere else,” Draco asserted. “My grandfather left money for me. I mean, we have plenty of money anyway, but this is money the Lestranges don’t know about. It’s hidden in the house. When the Lestranges arrived, Grandfather said specifically that that money was for me to leave. So I’m leaving.”

Astoria did want Draco out of that house, but not upon the conditions of Voldemort winning the war. It made her uncomfortable that Draco looked at it that way, but she supposed he was simply desperate for it to be over.

“Luna’s alive, by the way. I figured you’d be worried, since she’s in your class and everyone’s talking about it. It was the Carrows. They hexed her, but she recovered in a day. They’re keeping her in our basement, of course. Because _why not_. Why not put people in our damn basement. Although –– and I hate to say this –– the makeshift prison they have going on down there is better than Azkaban,” Draco said gravely. “They picked Luna because her father’s a huge blood-traitor. I feel awful. I tried to pretend she wasn’t down there, but that made me think about her even more. And I… I can barely look my father in the eye. I love him, but it’s the worst to see him unable to do anything or fight back. Father’s been wandless since summer. Mother’s started to hold her ground with the Lestranges, but she can’t change anything. I hate being there at home, but I get so nervous when we’re apart because I don’t know what could happen to them.”

“I can’t even imagine,” Astoria said, but she very much could. “I can see how difficult this is, both mentally and physically. It’s like things keep getting added on to your situation.”

“Yeah… Were you in the castle during the holiday? I heard it was nicer without the Carrows here,” Draco changed the subject.

“No, I went home with Professor Sinistra,” Astoria said. “We had a nice Christmas dinner, but Rabastan was sending her Howlers frequently.”

“Yeah, I heard him make some of them before Bellatrix blocked the noise coming from his room. He’s a whackjob. They all are, to be certain, but he’s… well, he’s the loudest. The Dark Lord hits him with Silencing Charms from time to time, after which Rabastan kisses his feet. I could have lived the rest of my life without seeing that.”

Astoria also tried not to picture the toe-kissing too hard. When it became obvious that Draco was done talking, she charmed the paper snakes to slither over and tickle his ear. He squirmed and jumped up. Then he rubbed his forehead.

“Astoria, I’m really glad I have you in my life. You’re the only one who understands me.”

“How rude of you to forget Moaning Myrtle,” Astoria said.

Draco brightened a little, “Oh, I could never forget her. I bought her bubble bath for Christmas to put into the Carrows’ water when they brush their teeth. I hope she does it soon.”

“Amycus and Alecto don’t brush their teeth,” noted Astoria.

“Ah, that’s true. Well, I’m sure Myrtle will put it to good use somehow,” Draco said, and by the Carrow pair’s screaming Myrtle’s name the following day, it seemed like the wish had been granted. It was the perfect prelude to Astoria’s sixteenth birthday, during which she managed to spend time with all of her friends over the course of the day. Even though it wasn’t much of a birthday, a small celebration took away some of the stress her new Apparition class had caused. Yet she hoped the date of her birthday wasn’t causing more grief for her family and Rhiannon; to them, Astoria had never aged this far. To them, she was frozen in time last summer.

Astoria noticed the change in Flora’s face as the hours ticked away to Monday’s Dark Arts class. What would Amycus make her do this week, and to whom? In other classes, Amycus picked students he liked to cast curses on the ones he didn’t, but in their class, Flora had always been the one. No one else shared in Flora’s shame as he held her arm up to show the class the wand motions before forcing her to cast terrible things on her peers. Based on Theodore’s and Draco’s warnings, Astoria knew it was only a matter of time before Flora would be told to cast the Cruciatus Curse. Flora knew, too. She ate very little of her Sunday dinner.

Hestia was passing Astoria the salt when their plates started rattling. Flora put her hand flat on the table to feel the movement. Draco and Alexa looked round the room, but even the Gryffindors knew better than to play pranks. Astoria glanced at the dark windows; there was an almost nonexistent chance of thunderstorms at this temperature. She wondered what the teachers thought of the noise of glass and china, but it stopped suddenly soon after. Everyone who was looking round the room rested their eyes upon two Death Eaters who had walked up to the door. Their hoods were down and their masks were off, held over their left breast. Snape stood up, his face twisted.

“Sir,” said one of the Death Eaters to Snape, “M-Madam Deputy Lestrange h-has arrived, requesting the presence of the De-Deputy Headmistress.”

Before Snape could make a response of any sort, the two Death Eaters parted, standing at opposite ends of the door. Astoria felt Draco tug her sleeve up to reveal her pure-blood identification band. He cast something protective on her under his breath, but it was mostly for his comfort; Astoria knew whatever it was could easily be broken by a witch of Bellatrix’s level. Amycus and Alecto stood up and flanked Snape. Astoria swallowed hard and saw Hestia start to tremble.

_Occlumency_ , _I need Occlumency_ , Astoria thought, about a year too late.

Bellatrix Lestrange appeared in a ceremonial version of her uniform. Her silver mask, etched with heavy, swirling thorns and a sharp gate across the mouth, glinted in the candlelight from above. The whites of her eyes could not be seen, but Bellatrix drew every eye herself. She was tall for a woman, and her hairstyle made her even taller. It was neatly curled in some places and wildly knotted in others. Multiple braided aiguillettes of silver crossed from her shoulder down, holding her black cape in place as its long train trailed behind her rigid steps. Her heels stopped clicking in the middle of the walkway, and she turned to face the Slytherin table. Instantly, Draco, Flora, Hestia, Theodore, Imogen Stretton, Crabbe, and Goyle all stood attention by their seats. After some obviously dissented whispering, Chesna Borgin and Sedecla Burke also stood for Bellatrix. Astoria felt all the more noticeable for not standing due to her proximity to the others. Bellatrix made a short, high-pitched giggle, but then grabbed her lower back and hissed in pain. Astoria nearly choked on her own breath. She thought someone –– Neville –– had dared to hex Bellatrix, but it was not the case. Bellatrix rubbed her back and continued sauntering up to Snape. Behind him, all the teachers had balled fists and drained faces. Professor Sinistra, though, leaned forward with daring menace. Pansy Parkinson suddenly decided to stand up.

Exactly three marching steps behind the edge of Bellatrix’s train, the unmistakable Rodolphus and Rabastan entered the Great Hall. They, too, were dressed formally, wearing double-breasted uniforms beneath their trademark black travelling cloaks. They removed their hoods in unison. Rodolphus was on the side farther from Astoria. He was a large form, taller than his wife, but smaller in personality. He only looked straight ahead and moved with exacting footsteps. He had gently waving black hair, peeking upwards in an old-fashioned style from his heavily-decorated mask. His thick hands threatened to tear the seams of his gloves.

Rabastan’s presence was sensed as much as it was seen. His Legilimency, perhaps in combination with Bellatrix’s ahead of him, was strong enough to set the room’s occupants alight –– Astoria could not believe the influx of emotions and traumas she sensed by proxy of Rabastan’s work. Most people did not know Occlumency, but there was an inherent guard simply by possessing magic. How could he have broken down so many people without even raising a finger? Astoria felt like she had fallen into a sea of Muggles due to Rabastan’s passive influence.

“Severus.”

“Bellatrix.”

Bellatrix held her chin high as she addressed Snape, and Rodolphus stood like stone behind her. Rabastan was unhealthily skinny from prison; his head looked too large for his small shoulders. He tugged on the band that held his mask over the mangled hole that had once been his left ear. He tried to look beyond Snape and the Carrows without moving from his designated spot, desperate to see Professor Sinistra. Like the others’, his skull-like mask obscured his identity, but Astoria had seen his face on wanted posters and in Professor Sinistra’s memories. Rabastan’s mask had a vermiculated design worming its way down from the eyes and encircling the edge of the face irregularly. The mouthpiece opened through a crosshatch pattern, as if to represent claw marks. His dark brown hair had receded early for his age, and he had it mussed forward to disguise it. He continued to touch his mask, over and over, whilst his older brother did not budge.

“Per Alecto’s humble request, we have decided to stay one week to evaluate the work being done here,” Bellatrix said.

Her vocal inflection seemed to hit all the wrong spots, like she was trying to steer a child’s voice through a full-grown throat. However, she could not have made it more obvious that she considered this visit to Hogwarts beneath her level.

“I will require accommodations,” Bellatrix said, implying that she did not care whether Rodolphus and Rabastan slept on the floor.

“Certainly,” Snape said through his teeth. “I shall have rooms prepared in the North Tower at once.”

“Three rooms,” Bellatrix instructed.

Since they were rather hard to miss, Bellatrix caught sight of Professor Flitwick, Professor Hagrid, and Professor Firenze at the staff table, and her shoulders hunched up in disgust even though Alecto already had them seated as far as possible from the seats of honour.

“The half-breeds eat _at the table_ , Severus? Ensure that I do not see them again. They would be quite a chore to clean if I do.”

The other teachers made disapproving comments on their fellows’ behalf.

“ _SILENCE_!” boomed Rodolphus suddenly, drawing a knotted, reddish wand and tracing it in a line across the staff table. Bellatrix, meanwhile, removed her mask and traced her eyes all over the Deputy Headmistress.

“Madam,” Alecto said under scrutiny with a little bow. Amycus followed suit.

“So formal, Alecto?” Bellatrix questioned.

“It’s a nice occasion to have you here,” responded Alecto.

“There were plenty of better opportunities,” uttered Bellatrix, but Astoria would not have heard that if she were not listening so closely.

“I thank you for answering our invitation,” said Alecto at a normal volume.

“I answered _yours_ , Alecto.”

Alecto’s expression was devoid of any emotions established in the English language.

“Oh. Well, it would be an honour to have you join my classes.”

Bellatrix rocked her curls side to side, considering the invitation. With vague displeasure, she didn’t accept it in the way it was offered to her.

“Ro, you’ll join Alecto for Mudblood Studies. Rabastan, do us a favour and clarify History of Magic for the students.”

Rabastan squirmed unhappily.

“An accurate _History_ curriculum, Rabastan, is relevant to our Master’s aims,” Bellatrix said slickly, without even having looked behind her. “Displace the ghost.”

She then sighed with forced ennui.

“Well, now… that leaves me to examine Dark Arts… I’ll be thoroughly fascinated, I’m sure. Draw up a schedule of those three classes, Severus. We will evaluate their effectiveness starting tomorrow. Alecto… I should have you know we are fulfilling your request secondarily to gathering information from the students about Undesirable Number One.”

At Bellatrix’s words, everyone had Harry Potter’s face in the forefront of their minds. Astoria grimaced, knowing that that would only give Bellatrix and Rabastan more to work with.

“Of course, Madam,” Alecto acknowledged, showing her grey teeth in a smile. “You have free reign.”

Bellatrix breathed, “Oh, if only.”

Amycus signalled the end of the conversation with another bow. Once the Carrows returned to their seats, Draco, the twins, and the rest of the standing Slytherins also seated themselves. Draco would not look at Astoria, perhaps out of fear or shame, but she had her eyes locked on the offending visitors regardless. Whilst Bellatrix was giving Snape the absolute specifics of what she would want for breakfast in the morning, Rabastan fell out of formation. He stepped carefully round Bellatrix and Snape, skulked past the Ravenclaws, and stopped at the front of the Slytherin table. His back was to the students, but his proximity was like a solid weight on Astoria’s chest. Minds raced all round her in the form of distracting, ambient noise. Astoria was only a few seats down from him.

“All this wasted time,” Rabastan called to the only spot at the staff table that transfixed him. “All this distance.”

Astoria’s skin grew cold, but she was burning hot under the guise of minding her own business. It was taking all of her willpower not to grab her wand and do to Rabastan what he had done to Neville’s parents. They said you had to _mean_ the Cruciatus Curse for it to work.

Astoria could tell that Professor Sinistra was using immeasurably strong Occlumency by the dead zone surrounding her in the sea of noise. Pride tickled her. After all, _she_ had helped the professor recover this skill even though her own Occlumency was naught to speak of, and her Legilimency was miniscule compared to Rabastan’s.

“Aurora, it was neither Alecto nor a vagary that brought me here,” Rabastan spoke again despite never having received acknowledgement. “There is so much for you and me to discuss. For instance, the only thanks I ever got for getting you this job was you _tearing my ear off_. It’s made the whole world sound different, Aurora. I wear the injury proudly, though. It’s proof your darkest magic has _touched_ me, as though it were something you reserved for a special occasion. _Did you mean to take my whole head, angel_?”

Professor Sinistra got her wand ready, but nothing happened yet. Something stirred in the wake of noise behind Astoria, and she followed the scent trail to Pansy Parkinson, who was rapt with Rabastan’s figure. Parkinson had her hands clutched together against her chest, and she leaned far over the table to get a glimpse of Rabastan in person, _at last in person_. Parkinson had swooned over the same few pictures of Rabastan so many times that it had ruined her close relationships. Her attraction was loud, and Astoria recoiled at the unwanted mental contact. Professor Sinistra had warned Astoria to control her Legilimency, and, without having taken that advice, Astoria now shook off Parkinson’s projections of desire like they were gnats on sweaty skin. When Astoria faced the staff table again, she jolted. Rabastan had turned round without her detecting it out of the corner of her eye, and his mask shone expressionlessly in front of the students.

“Ro, you’ll never believe this,” he called, leaning towards his accomplices and tracing gloved fingers over the top of the Slytherin table. “Rodolphus.”

Rodolphus turned his head, having heard Rabastan, but he was busy speaking with Bellatrix. Rabastan’s shoulders hitched. To Astoria’s personal discomfort, Rabastan switched his speech to French to address his brother.

“Hey, fathead, get a load of the Parkinsons’ daughter!” Rabastan shouted. “Little creep wants in my pants.”

Astoria hated Parkinson beyond belief. It was far more than Parkinson’s previous stint at snogging Draco, or even her racist treatment of Rhiannon. The previous February, Parkinson had cursed Astoria with a nightmare in which a somewhat sexualised version of Rabastan had tortured and killed everyone Astoria held dear, with Draco as the only exception. That nightmare had even included Daphne’s death –– Daphne, who had been one of Parkinson’s closest friends before the Lestrange fetish spawned. It was not dislike, distaste, or mild antipathy that Astoria held for Parkinson after that Nightmare Curse. It was hatred. Yet to see Rabastan’s reaction to an eighteen-year-old’s media-fed obsession with him made Astoria sick on Parkinson’s behalf. Without the slightest knowledge of French, Parkinson would have no idea what Rabastan was saying, although she might have heard her surname.

Rodolphus snorted at first but soon broke into an ugly laughter. He, too, spoke fluent French, and Astoria had never anticipated such insults to her mother’s language. Rodolphus replied to his brother with toxic hilarity.

“I thought you wanted Crouch’s dirty old witch! At least this one will take you.”

“This bitch feels nothing like her!” Rabastan hooted. “Maybe if I shut my eyes.”

“She must be pretty messed up to like your ugly face,” Rodolphus jeered.

“Me? Look at you! You look like a pile of dragon dung set on fire and sprinkled with Muggle roadkill!”

“ _Roadkill_? Oh, you mean Nott’s wife?” Rodolphus roared with laughter, and his brother joined him.

Their exchange had been loud and intimidating to the rest of the students, but it had no meaning to them. Astoria, though, was in turmoil, quietly willing Parkinson not to put herself in harm’s way with her stupid obsession. Rabastan soon lost amusement in Parkinson’s mind and hopped up to the staff table. Professor Vector and Madam Pince sat on either side of Professor Sinistra and tensed up at Rabastan’s approach. He delighted in their show of uneasiness and brushed the sides of his robes behind him to reveal the weapons he carried on his belt. On his left, he carried a dagger engraved with the Dark Mark and phials of shimmering poisons. On his right, he kept an assortment of sharp, rusty Muggle tools, possibly of mind to show blood-traitors the brutality of Muggle torture devices. After all, the Cruciatus Curse didn’t give Rabastan the high from harming people with his own two hands. The last thing on his belt was something looped in a circle, which he wrapped his hand over and shook downwards. A serpentine form of tightly braided leather unravelled to his ankles. Astoria’s eyes traced back up the short whip to Rabastan’s hand. He gripped tightly to the whip’s handle –– his wand.

There was a trend amongst wizards in polite society to affix their wands to walking sticks, and some elderly witches and wizards kept them in canes. Astoria had never seen a wand so misused as to be made into a whip, though. It offended her, and yet she wondered how its magic would cast, and how long it had taken Rabastan to adapt to the wand motions. She wished she had not been so curious to see it in action, though.

“ _Stupefy_ ,” Rabastan mumbled, and cracked the whip against the staff table, sending everyone jumping out of their seats.

Professor Sinistra had blocked the spell, but due to the long trail of magic created by Rabastan’s whip, her deflection had only served to redirect the spell to Professor Vector. Once hit, Professor Vector fell out of her seat, and chaos ensued. Snape was screaming something at Rabastan whilst Rodolphus led Bellatrix calmly out of the commotion. Madam Pince was helping Professor Vector come to, and Professor Sinistra was fully prepared to duel. Draco, Hestia, and Flora were all urging Astoria to leave. She stood, but she couldn’t run away from this. Rabastan was using the commotion to his advantage. He swept the whip across him and back to the right, then cracked it once more, barely missing Professor Sinistra’s face.

“ _Imperio_.”

“NO!” Astoria screamed, but she was grabbed from behind by Draco and Flora. “ _NO, NO, NO_!”

Professor Sinistra’s eyes rolled for a second, and she lowered her wand. Astoria was so frantic she thought she might kick Draco and Flora to get free and _do something_. It was like no one else was looking at what was happening, only trying to run away and save their own skin. She fought them hard as they pulled her back.

Without any help, though, Professor Sinistra shook out the Imperius Curse in less than a few seconds and returned a spell to Rabastan.

“ _Stupefy_!” she cast, but Rabastan seemed to have some awful advantage in parrying spells and making sure they hit _somewhere_. Professor Sprout felt it on her way to protecting the Hufflepuffs. However, Astoria quickly realised the Stunning Spell had been a somewhat-safe decoy. Rabastan’s whip made his reaction time ages slower, and Professor Sinistra hit him with a much harder curse that he could not stop.

“ _DEFODIO_!”

Draco threw Astoria behind him and started trying to push her out of the Great Hall. But she couldn’t tear her eyes from the scene. Rabastan’s blood splashed onto the floor, and he fell to his knees laughing. Somehow able to stifle the pain, he grabbed the stopper of his whip in one hand and the handle in the other. He brushed a spell across his chest, casting healing magic under his breath, and then bowled sideways to watch Professor Sinistra rush to the aid of Professor Vector and Professor Sprout.

Rabastan had blood on his gloves, and it smeared onto his mask as he pulled it off. His mussed hair fell over thick, arched eyebrows. He had old wounds on his face, likely from Voldemort or Bellatrix: a wide, pink cut above his right brow, and a heavily swollen, black left eye. He had but a thin line for an upper lip, but a plush lower one, giving him the impression that he was always smirking, even as his stubble-shadowed chin twisted and wrinkled from discomfort and anger. He was so distorted with emotion that his Death Eater’s mask had given off a less threatening aura than his face.

Draco, Flora, and now Hestia were right to try to remove Astoria from the room. Because of Amycus’s big mouth, Rabastan had been searching for Professor Sinistra’s beloved Legilimency student, and Astoria had made a scene by screaming when he tried to Imperius her. Rabastan’s smile seemed to open from the bottom, and his teeth were sharp against his lip. Depending on how the light touched him, his bitter eyes shone somewhere between light hazel and dark blue. When they locked on Astoria, though, his pupils dilated nearly to the brim of the colour, like a nocturnal animal’s. He flung the whip upwards, in line with where Astoria stood, and it cracked above his own head.

“ _Peek-a-boo_ ,” Rabastan said, and his Legilimency flooded Astoria’s skull, even after she shut her eyes and ran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"The abyss of your eyes, full of horrible thoughts,  
>  Exhales vertigo, and discreet dancers  
> Cannot look without bitter nausea  
> At the eternal smile of your thirty-two teeth."_  
> \- "Danse Macabre," C. Baudelaire


	19. Parasomnia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **parasomnias (n.)** \- a class of sleep-wake disorders marked by abnormal behavioural, experiential, or physical events occurring during sleep or sleep-wake transitions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 19 - "Waking the Witch" by Kate Bush
> 
> **Content warning: sexual harassment of minors.** Bits of Cursed Child in this one.

Astoria ran faster, breaking away from her group. Rabastan’s Legilimency made her keep losing balance. Nothing would get him out, and her head throbbed with conflicting forces as his slow words projected into her head like a glued Amplifying Charm. This was nothing like practising with Professor Sinistra.

 _So_ you’re _the one the Greengrasses are finally going to let us keep_! _The infamous Legilimens Amycus told me about_! _Poor thing_! _Who’s witch are you_? _Malfoy’s_? _Tsk tsk_! _The Malfoys have fallen out of favour_. _We need you for a Yaxley or a Selwyn_. _What do you like in a wizard_ , _ma voyeuse_?

 _Oh_ , _tu parles français, Astoria_? _Ça va être amusant_ …

Astoria ran down the corridor off the Great Hall, but no sound could displace Rabastan’s voice.

 _Aw_ , _you don_ ’ _t like me_? _You haven_ ’ _t even met me_. _How can you be so sure you don_ ’ _t like me_? _I know what a hideous blood_ - _traitor you are_ , _but that doesn_ ’ _t mean I’ll hurt you if you just do what we want_. _You see_ , my _witch is_ _a blood-traitor_ , _too_. _I have to set her straight_. _You know her well_ , _don_ ’ _t you_? _She trained you_. _You know my witch_. _You called to her_.

 _That_ ’ _s right_ , _show me Aurora_ …

 _No, no, show me Aurora Sinistra right now_.

 _GIVE ME EVERYTHING YOU HAVE ON AURORA_!

Down the basement, through the corridors, to the dungeons.

He was still there.

Through the halls, across the common room, up the stairs, and into the dorm.

He was screaming.

Astoria ran into the bathroom and heard the sound of her own breathing. Rabastan’s voice was gone at last. Her roommates came in a few minutes later and started jabbering. Flora held her by the shoulders, bracing her balance.

“Astoria…”

“Please,” Astoria said, sliding out of Flora’s embrace.

The girls had trouble leaving her alone, but they ultimately did. Astoria clicked the door shut and ran a hot shower. Later, when she was sitting on the side of the tub wrapped in towels, a knock rapped against the dormitory door. She hurried her clothing back on. She heard Hestia ask who the visitor was.

“It’s Professor Sinistra.”

“ _DON’T OPEN THE DOOR_ ,” Astoria yelped, her breath displacing the bathroom steam.

“I’m not that witless, Astoria! The Lestrange brothers can’t get back here anyway without getting cursed to hell and back,” Hestia said. “But, er, I can’t think of a security question for Professor Sinistra.”

“Ask her what the Doppelvanga calls Snape,” Astoria called as she drew her shirt over her head.

When Hestia posed the question, Professor Sinistra said “What a Mess” and was granted entry.

“Oh, it _is_ tiny in here,” the professor said. “Hello, everyone.”

Astoria opened the door. Professor Sinistra had her hands folded in front of her.

“Professor Slughorn is addressing the other students in the common room. He’s talking about safety and how to behave,” Professor Sinistra said, seeming not to know where to stand in the small room.

“I can’t imagine he’s saying anything we haven’t already figured out,” Flora shrugged and sat on her bed to give Professor Sinistra more space.

“Astoria, I wanted a few quick words,” the professor said as though there was somewhere else for them to go. “You shouldn’t have indicated that we were close. I’ve tried to Obliviate Rabastan’s memories of me multiple times over the years… and again just now, but he’s smart to my intentions.”

“Amycus told him anyway! Rabastan already knew you taught me Legilimency, and he _Imperiused_ you, Professor!” Astoria said.

“He has tried to Imperius me as much as I have tried to Obliviate him. I’m so used to his attempts and so averse to his magic that I can handle it on my own. It is _not_ your job to protect me. It is my job to protect _you_. You’re sixteen. I thought I had made this clear.”

“Well, I didn’t think he would actually come to school,” Astoria said.

“No one did,” said the professor uncomfortably. “Anyway, I will not be holding any classes this week. I’m going to stay in my quarters in the tower and have Winky send my meals there. I’ll have her send all of your meals here, as well. Flora, Hestia, I understand that due to your aunt and uncle, you must attend class. However, Astoria, Alexa… I would like you both to remain in your room this week. Keep your nazars hung over your beds. As you have seen, his Legilimency stings, and I understand he studies dream magic.”

Astoria acquiesced, and Professor Sinistra bade her goodnight. Astoria and her roommates spent most of that night debating on whether they were more afraid to see Bellatrix Lestrange _and_ Amycus in the morning or more afraid of the consequences of skipping class. In spite of Winky providing meals directly to their room, it was an even break. Flora said, “I know Amycus, and it’s between ‘suffer now’ and ‘suffer later.’”

On top of that, Bellatrix’s absentee policy might be murder for all they knew.

The next morning, Astoria wolfed down her breakfast sitting atop her bed, and for a fleeting moment, she wondered what her parents would think of what she had become. No manners, no morals, and a body full of Dark magic. And here they had thought she died a martyr.

During her first free period, Draco was trying to prepare her as they sat in the common room, full of dread. He was paler than usual. Astoria didn’t remember what her _own_ usual was anymore.

“Bellatrix enjoys being involved in my life,” Draco said. “Erm, she’ll probably ask about, er… about us… I’m sure she’s gathered it from somebody… Probably Alecto…”

He picked his fingers and kept opening his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Ultimately, he settled on, “It’s my fault you’ve become mixed up in this.”

Astoria rubbed his back, smoothing out the wrinkles in his clothes that had been made by hunching over.

“Well, Draco, every relationship comes with problems. Some families have a racist uncle who ruins Christmas dinners. You have a homicidal aunt. Granted, it’s a bit much to hand me,” she said lightly, then changed her tone, “but I don’t regret being your girlfriend.”

Draco’s stunning grey eyes kept their place on hers as he rubbed his temples.

“Well, I regret not giving you a better situation. I had no idea she was coming here. I never intended for you to see her in person. I never intended any of this.”

“We can’t change it, Draco,” Astoria said.

As the time slipped away, Draco gave her so much advice on how _not_ to aggravate Bellatrix that it seemed to amount to either being invisible or not existing at all. She tried to wipe the scowl from her face before heading to D.A.D.A. with her roommates.

“I don’t like this,” said Alexa once they left the common room.

“Oh, I really don’t like this,” said Alexa on the stairs.

“Merlin, Merlin, I don’t like this.”

From the hallway, Astoria saw Bellatrix. She sat at Amycus’s desk with her hands folded in front of her. She had no mask today, and she looked like Andromeda Tonks’s evil twin. Unlike last night’s uniform, she wore a top with fishnet sleeves. Her maroon lipstick was similar to Flora’s shade, but her mouth was held taut and cruel. Her eyelids were heavy, and her lashes lay low with both exhaustion and tedium. Astoria would not make the same mistake she did with Rabastan, though, and averted her eyes.

“Which class is this again?” Bellatrix sighed.

“Sixth-year N.E.W.T.s, so all Houses,” Amycus said. “My girls are in this one.”

“Mm, your girls? Were there two?”

Amycus cleared his throat and glanced out the door. His nieces were hiding in the hall until the last possible minute. Bellatrix raised her eyebrows.

“When will I get to see my nephew work in class?”

“Wednesday, Madam,” Amycus said tersely.

“Mm.”

Most Gryffindors were missing when the bells chimed to begin class. Amycus glared across the empty seats, and Astoria wondered where Ginny could be hiding out. The Slytherins were all there, though. Montel Davis and Horatio Pershore, who usually pulled fast ones on Amycus at the risk of being cursed, were on their best behaviour with Bellatrix in the room. Flora and Hestia were compelled by circumstance to greet Bellatrix formally, whilst Astoria and Alexa scurried past to get to their seats.

“Good morning, Madam Lestrange,” they said with a small bow.

Bellatrix laughed at them, and asked Amycus, “Ha! Which one’s which?”

“That one with the scratch on her face is Hestia. Our Flora does great with the Arts,” Amycus introduced.

“Mm,” said Bellatrix, staring them down. “Oh… _Oh_ , I do see how to tell them apart, Amycus.”

“Flora, sit down,” Amycus mouthed.

For once, Flora and Hestia were eager to obey him. Flora dropped next to Astoria and rubbed the corners of her eyes. Hestia sneered as Imogen Stretton greeted Bellatrix sycophantically, but since Imogen was part of a family who had disobeyed the Dark Lord’s orders, Bellatrix did not acknowledge her. Imogen glared sadistically at Astoria and bumped the side of her desk before she sat in the back with her vicious friends. By that point, Bellatrix had already invaded Amycus’s mind, much to his palpable discomfort, and she anticipated the entire format of the class.

“You most often make them take notes on Flora’s curses?”

“They gotta cast ’em on one another to pass the tests, Madam,” Amycus explained.

“Yet many refuse and have no credit in this class,” Bellatrix swiftly said. “There are several students who are content to have zeros.”

“Er, I’ve Imperiused them, so,” Amycus faltered. “Or I curse ’em myself when they don’t wanna listen and do the spells.”

“Why so much attention to Flora?” Bellatrix said. “You expect her to join our forces once she’s of age? You claim she’s skilled, but she’s been holding back on you, Amycus. We do not need any more _reluctant_ members amongst the Dark Lord’s forces.”

Amycus kept waffling between justifications and apologies, but Bellatrix’s Legilimency was too slick for someone like him. It was taking Astoria great effort to ward Bellatrix off when she looked at her, but Bellatrix was nothing like Rabastan’s level.

“Teach them my favourite already, Amycus. I know some of them can succeed.”

“I’d love to, Madam, but Snape said––”

Amycus didn’t get to finish his sentence before Bellatrix lunged for him, her hands threatening to tear the collar of his shirt. She was a head taller than him, and her long hair fell onto his shoulders.

“I’m still _above Snape_ , you ungrateful snail!” she screamed. “And I am _well_ above _you_. Your hospitality is quite lacking considering that your sister wrote me to come here, Amycus Carrow.”

Bellatrix spidered a hand up his face and puckered his lips between her forefinger and thumb. If he didn’t already, Amycus undoubtedly regretted his correspondence with the Lestranges now.

“What were you doing whilst I rotted in Azkaban, again?” Bellatrix respired in his face. “The Dark Lord asked everyone but you…”

The veins in Amycus’s forehead tensed above his twitching eyes, and he dug his nails into his palm. Hestia seemed to relish the discomfort Bellatrix was causing her sadistic uncle, but Flora held her clasped hands against her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut. Bellatrix leaned to Amycus’s ear, whispering things Astoria was much too close not to hear.

“Care to know what _I_ was doing as the dementors ate my little black heart away? I was reading letters that had already been opened by _you_ , your tacky magic all over the envelopes… And then… after a while… the letters stopped coming to me. But I wonder what happened to all the letters I sent _out_ , Amycus… Did you censor them with a forgery spell? I know they became too much to censor… You started purging them all in the fire… Oh, Amycus, I doubt I could have protected Andromeda with that technique. Quite a way to spend your evenings, always watching for owls to come by…”

Amycus’s scowl itched for violence, but he was far below Bellatrix in both rank and ability. She let go of his face, wiped her hand of his sweat, and took over the class.

“You there, _Stretton_!”

Imogen Stretton jumped out of her seat and stood attention. Bellatrix waved her arm dramatically, and Imogen shuffled to the front of the room. Having dismissed Amycus off to the side, Bellatrix now grabbed Imogen’s head on either ear, ruffling her hair.

“You lost your mummy, didn’t you? You know it’s her own fault, don’t you? She was supposed to be ready to deploy for the Dark Lord, not off playing Whack-a-Niffler at the Greengrasses’… But I understand how sad you must be, dearie… I know who killed your mummy. It was her family,” Bellatrix snapped, pointing at Astoria. “Come up here, Greengrass.”

Forget the need for Occlumency –– Astoria’s mind went blank with fear, and she shivered as she stood. Bellatrix circled round her and rested her chin on Astoria’s shoulder. She cooed French privately in her ear.

“Your Maman knows my rotten baby sisters, is that right? Yes, it seems our families are close. And yet, no one’s ever introduced you to me… Astoria? _I’m_ part of the family, too. It is so _exciting_ to meet you.”

Bellatrix wrapped her arms round Astoria tightly, clawing at the soft underside of her upper arms.

“Do you know that blood-traitor is as bad as Mudblood, Astoria? Your naughty family has centuries of debt to its bloodline. Oh, but I wonder where you get this Legilimency and this Dark magic, my sweet. It’s nestled in your body. Are you addicted yet?”

Bellatrix held Astoria to the spot with magic-enforced strength and told Imogen Stretton to raise her wand.

“Now, I’ll hold her here, dearie,” she said in English to Imogen. “All you have to do is think of your dead mummy and say ‘ _Crucio_ ’ right at this little blood-traitor.”

Imogen’s face contorted. She had been waiting for months to do this without repercussions. Astoria shut her eyes. She should have stayed in her dorm. _She should have_ … she should have done a lot of things differently…

“ _Crucio_!” shouted Imogen.

Blackout pain surged between Astoria’s skin and muscle. There was no one place on her body to hold, to stifle, to mentally block or overcome. Her whole existence was pain, twisting and burning. She screamed, cried, and convulsed, but Bellatrix’s lemon balm perfume was the only other thing in the room she sensed besides the hellish torture. Astoria had no sense of time; when she hit the hardwood quivering, it could have been a minute later or the next day. Bellatrix smacked a spell against Astoria, and she flew up to her feet. Imogen still stood in front of her, content with her actions, though not exactly brimming with delight as Astoria imagined she might be.

“Now, now, don’t be so glum, Greenie,” Bellatrix tittered at Astoria’s ear. “It’s your turn.”

Imogen’s contentment faded instantly. She had not had a single curse cast on her in this class, let alone the Cruciatus Curse.

“W-What?” Astoria muttered, her skin still burning.

Bellatrix jabbed her dark, curved wand into Astoria’s cheek.

“What’s the matter? You don’t want to get her back for what she did to your family? You need to focus on that hatred, Greengrass. You need to do this right. Be a witch for once.”

Imogen Stretton was mouthing something frantically to Diane Carter and Olivia Shardlow. Astoria couldn’t stand any of them. They had ruined Rhiannon’s first two years of school. Not to mention the stock Imogen came from. Her mother had murdered Renshaw and Gracie.

“That’s it, sweetie,” Bellatrix hummed.

Astoria added bricks to her wall of Occlumency to get Bellatrix out. Astoria knew Imogen wouldn’t have come up with the same idea to go kill people as her mother, even if given the chance. Imogen was a horrible person, but the ability to murder someone simply wasn’t in her. Astoria’s fresh experience of the Cruciatus Curse gave her two trains of thought. She deeply wanted to exact revenge, but at the same time, this level of pain should be reserved for people worse than Imogen. Astoria knew it firsthand now –– it was _not_ a curse to fantasise about. But Bellatrix bruised Astoria’s cheek with the tip of her wand.

“Get on with the curse, Greengrass. What does Amycus do when you kiddies don’t obey? Imperius you? Ha! As I am sure you have guessed, the Carrows are under a no-kill order from Snape. _I outrank Snape_. There is only one person above me… and I believe you know who that is.”

A death threat, nice. Well, Imogen wasn’t evil enough get the Cruciatus Curse simply because someone said, but she was evil enough to curse when the other option was to get killed oneself. Draco was right. Astoria’s hesitation was gone.

“ _Crucio_.”

Astoria’s hand pulsed with the strength of twenty more of herself. It was not as difficult to maintain this spell as some had claimed. What did that say about human nature, and more importantly, what did that say about Astoria? She found it easy to tune out the screams of someone who stood for the ideals that had killed and exiled her family. But the other students shut their eyes and covered their ears.

“Very good,” Bellatrix said, and Astoria pulled her wand away from Imogen.

Astoria was grateful to stop, but she knew deep down she wasn’t sorry. She stared at the girl on the floor, who used the desks to clamber back to her feet and go cry on Diane Carter. It had only been a moment or two…

Bellatrix didn’t like either Imogen or Astoria and was riding the high of having seen them both in pain. Throughout the rest of the class, Bellatrix forced the remaining students to take turns on each other. She settled into Amycus’s desk and made him go get her food. Knowing that he (miraculously) had not spat in or poisoned it, she plopped the snacks into her mouth, watching the students’ pain like a theatre production. Flora had to injure Alexa, who couldn’t so much as pinch her in return. Montel and Horatio had no choice but to hurt one another, although their profound reluctance made it brief, like stubbing toes. Bellatrix then tried a little harder to mix enemies together for her entertainment. Hestia and Diane Carter went up at the same time, and it turned quite violent after the initial exchange of Cruciatus Curses. Bellatrix let their duel escalate to the point that there was damage to the room’s interior before separating them. Hestia knotted her hair into a bun and wiped a fleck of blood off her face. Amycus looked on proudly, so Hestia snarled at him.

When the bells tolled to change classes, everyone ran into a bottleneck at the door, as there had not been a single student present who hadn’t felt the Cruciatus Curse to some extent. However, Rabastan Lestrange was in the hallway nearby. He had come looking for Astoria after what must have been countless attempts to get into Astronomy Tower. Astoria tried to escape with Flora and Hestia, but Bellatrix grabbed her and pulled her backwards. Everyone who had not slipped past Rabastan turned to see what was happening as Bellatrix tugged Astoria’s hair until her forehead hurt.

“You’re horrible for him!” Bellatrix hissed. “I can’t fathom how he ever picked filth like you!”

She then Banished Astoria with her wand into the hall, where Rabastan waited with open arms. He seemed to take interest in Bellatrix’s departing comments as they exchanged Astoria.

With an odd lassoing motion, he put a Full-Body Bind Curse on Astoria and Levitated her above his head where she couldn’t see anything but the ceiling. Flora and Hestia had apparently raised their wands to Rabastan despite their better judgment, but a few cracks of that wand-whip told Astoria that their actions had been in vain. Instead of going to Arithmancy, which would have been welcomingly anti-climatic after Bellatrix, she watched the ceiling change on a long walk with Rabastan. She guessed he was taking her to Astronomy Tower by the turns he made. As she floated, Astoria actually spent more time trying to think of how to explain this fiasco to Professor Sinistra than how to get away. She had told Professor Sinistra she would stay in her dormitory to avoid things like this.

Rabastan discarded the spells at the foot of Astronomy Tower, throwing Astoria against the entrance door, which was obviously enchanted shut. Rabastan tapped his foot and tried to stare Astoria down. He rolled and unrolled the leather extension on his wand.

“How did you like the Cruciatus Curse, Astoria?” he asked. “Not too much, right?”

His voice was high-pitched and slow. Astoria stood up and stared at his feet. If she tried to run or call for help, he’d probably cast the curse he spoke of.

“Well, how did you like _casting_ the Cruciatus Curse?” he followed up with a laugh. “It feels _so_ good, doesn’t it? You feel it deep in your chest.”

He rubbed his gloved hand over his own chest, which was bandaged beneath his robes after Professor Sinistra’s Gouging Spell.

“I know you’re Aurora’s favourite student. There’s a lot of unfinished business between her and me. Aurora always avoids me, though. Whatever happened to talking it out, right? I love a good communicator. That Legilimency wavelength she has with Snape? I bet I could do that with her. I bet I could.”

Rabastan paced back and forth, his footsteps echoing against the floor and walls.

“She’s got the Bloody Baron in that tower, too. He did some _spooky_ stuff to me earlier. I was _frightened_ ,” Rabastan mocked. “Yeah, he doesn’t like me. He says I’m on the ‘path to destruction’ or something. He takes my presence really personally. Now he’s Aurora’s guard-dog. Guard- _ghost_? Whatever. I don’t care about her Spiritualist bunkum. Hey, you’re really quiet, by the way. So, let’s see… Ah. You don’t know how to get up there after all. It’d be better for you if you _did_ know. Now I’m going to have to make you scream to get her attention. She doesn’t listen when _I_ scream.”

Rabastan cracked his whip on the stone wall behind Astoria to startle her, and the noise was deafening.

“I guess it’s the Cruciatus for you, baby. I know she’ll come running for you, so be extra loud for me, mm’kay? _Cru_ –”

“ _Expelliarmus_!” Astoria cast on impulse, for her body knew the pain was imminent.

Rabastan’s wand flung from him like a thrown snake, twisting in the air. Only to keep it from hitting her face, Astoria grabbed the handle on its way down as Rabastan snatched the leather braid. The thing stirred in her sweaty palm. In horror, Astoria dropped it.

“Aw, no tug-of-war?” Rabastan laughed. “Well, you’re just no fun, Astoria Greengrass! _Cruci_ ––”

“ _Protego Nidhogg_!”

The Shield erupted round her and she at last made her escape. Her choice of spell, unfortunately, only attracted Rabastan more. He ran after her, his black robes flapping with the force of his speed. He took great delight in slandering her at the top of his lungs.

“ _YOU’RE A DARK WITCH_ _‽ ASTORIA GREENGRASS IS A DARK WITCH! A GREENGRASS IS USING DARK MAGIC! SHE’S NO CLEANER THAN ME, NOOOO SIR! SHE’S DIIIIRTY! YUCK! SHE TOUCHED MY WAAAAND! EEK! AH HA HA HA! PROTEGO NIDHOGG!_ ”

He rapped the whip against her Shield as he cast his own version, and their Shields soon grated against each other. With a terrifying roar like a derailed train, five dragons sprouted from Rabastan’s Shield whilst her lone dragon was still spawning. They reached the balcony of the Grand Staircase, and he rammed the black dome against hers, threatening to push her over. His dragons gnashed their teeth at her Shield. It would break before her fall if she didn’t brace herself and jump _now_ …

Between the staircase rungs that her spell had torn to shreds, Astoria leapt, falling between the shifting staircases at sickening speed. Even with the Shield, the sight of so much space between her feet and the bottom floor roused her panic. She collided with a flight of stairs, drilling a huge cavern into it and sending wood flying everywhere before her Shield broke. She crawled across the damage as she heard more commotion above.

“ _LESTRANGE_!”

It was Snape’s voice. As Astoria skipped steps on her way down, she heard the two wizards’ brief scuffle. It seemed like Snape had out-cast Rabastan in no time.

“Rabastan, I will have you know that this is _my_ school you are damaging. I would be more than happy to inform the Dark Lord that you are working out of self-interest and have gathered surprisingly _little_ intelligence regarding Undesirable Number One for such a powerful Legilimens.”

Rabastan cussed his worst at Snape, but made sure to let Astoria know he hadn’t forgotten her.

“Oh, I’m gonna _ruin_ you, cupcake!” he called as she fled down the stairs.

~

To avoid harassment or worse, Professors Flitwick, Hagrid, and Firenze joined Professor Sinistra in cancelling their classes for the week. Astoria wouldn’t have gone to Charms, anyway; she was staying right in her room. She did absolutely _nothing_ on Tuesday, and when she skipped both Carrows’ classes on Wednesday, it didn’t count as the brave decision it normally would have been.

“Malfoy’s been asking us about you every ten minutes,” Hestia commented as she returned from Rodolphus-enhanced Muggle Studies.

Astoria was still trying to cast a Patronus for Draco’s nightly walks, but it had taken her considerably more attempts the past two nights. Still, she persisted, since she had no idea what the Lestranges’ command of dementors might be, or if they would harm Draco for his dealings with a blood-traitorous Greengrass.

“Did you tell him I’m fine?” asked Astoria.

“Yeah, to shut him up,” Hestia said. “Maybe you could step out to the stairs to go prove you’re alive sometime.”

“I will. So how was Rodolphus?”

“He just added some racist comments and didn’t do much,” said Hestia. “I think he was using it as a napping opportunity after interrogating so many students about Harry Potter.”

“Alecto’s ego was injured considerably once he started to snore,” Flora added.

“Has Rabastan tried to curse you again?” Astoria questioned.

“No, we haven’t seen him. Have you seen him, Alexa?”

“Er, no, but I heard he sent Neville Longbottom to the Hospital Wing with a Nightmare Curse. And he’s really been trying to impress students in the History classes. Some of them think what Rabastan’s saying is true, just because it’s someone to pay attention to besides Professor Binns.”

“All the more reason for us to take precautions,” Hestia said. “I didn’t like what Sinistra said about Rabastan using dream magic. So yesterday, before class, I asked Professor Slughorn if we might switch the lesson round for Double Potions. He’s taken a liking to me in spite of Amycus and Alecto because I do everything right––”

Flora rolled her eyes at her sister.

“–– so,” Hestia continued, “we made huge cauldrons of Dreamless Sleep Potions. They finished today.”

Hestia set down her heavy bag and drew out several large glass bottles wrapped in her green and silver scarves. The potion was light purple and shimmery, but Hestia cautioned that it tasted like mulch, inadvertently implying that she knew what mulch tasted like.

“It has three lavender and valerian sprigs each, three cups of ground betony for visions and nightmares, six peony sprigs for fears, extra periwinkle for protection against Dark magic, and a whole pound of lilac chastetree blossoms for those awkward dreams everyone gets about the cashier at Honeydukes. Oh, and the base is water and powdered milk. I’m working on the dairy-free version, but that’s my own experiment.”

“That’s very nice, Hestia!” Astoria said, admiring the creation.

“I’m distributing it free of charge,” Hestia said proudly.

Astoria shared a look with Flora. Hestia had a habit of using ingredients supplied for free by the school to make profitable concoctions to sell in the Hog’s Head and Knockturn Alley. It wasn’t exactly _noble_ that Hestia decided not to charge this time, but her hard work was admirable.

“Madam Pomfrey is drawing up the proper dosages of our potions and giving them to the students who can’t make their own. Anyway, here are our phials for each night. You just fill it up to the notch,” Hestia said, shaking them in the candlelight. “It’ll put you straight to sleep, though, so don’t take it till you’re ready for bed. Also, you should have a drink of water ready since it tastes so mulchy.”

“Hestia… did you eat dirt as a child?” Alexa joked.

“Listen, listen. I had career aspirations,” Hestia replied. “Anyways, here’s to Merlin’s mum getting child support.”

Hestia raised her phial and downed her drink, and she went to bed almost straightaway. Astoria still planned to cast a Patronus for Draco that night, so she took much less than her allotted dose. Still, she fell into an uncharacteristically peaceful slumber. Flora, though, had built up a tolerance to this formula ages ago and took her usual potions that were custom-brewed by Hestia but less tranquilising. It was for that reason that Flora was later roused from her sleep and able to wake Astoria up.

“F-Flora?” Astoria mumbled, rubbing her eyes as Flora shook her shoulders.

“Well, I’m not Hestia.”

“What’s wrong?”

“More than one thing.”

Astoria sat up against the soporific’s force. Flora’s face was pallid. Her pyjamas were triple-knotted, and her dressing gown was already on.

“Parkinson’s gone away with the fairies,” Flora said. “She cast Merlin-knows-what in the halls and everyone’s door opened.”

“ _What_?”

“Ours included. See how all the nazars Professor Sinistra gave us are gone? Parkinson used a Summoning Charm bigger than I’ve ever seen in my life, and everyone’s nazars went flying out of the room. I was in a light sleep as usual, and I ran over to the door. Parkinson’s Reducting the nazars to bits. You know what that tells me? Rabastan Lestrange got her.”

Astoria leapt out of bed. Flora had already shut and secured the door again, and Astoria couldn’t see anything through the peep hole. Her Foe-Shard was presently empty. Parkinson must not have been in range anymore.

“We have to stop Parkinson. She’s lost it,” Astoria said, and to her surprise, Flora agreed.

“Well, shouldn’t we wake the others?” Astoria followed up.

“No,” Flora said quickly, lending Astoria one of her cloaks. “They can’t use the magic we can. Let them sleep –– the potion will protect them. I already wrote a note for Hestia.”

 _What kind of note_? _A letter goodbye_? Astoria’s mind forced upon her.

She quickly flipped through her grimoire in the light from her wand, trying to review any Dark spells she might need against Parkinson or worse. In silence, they left the dormitory. Flora took the extra time to fortify the door on account of Parkinson’s new spell. There was a lot of blue dust on the floor in the hallway, remnants from the protective nazars that Parkinson had destroyed.

“I don’t think Parkinson can use the magic that opened up all the rooms. She’s likely Imperiused,” said Flora darkly.

“We’re in for worse news if she’s _not_ Imperiused and this was her idea,” Astoria remarked, tightly squeezing her wand.

She cast the Disillusionment Charm on them both and Silenced the bottom of their shoes, which was the new normal for sneaking about. She and Flora noticed that most others still had their doors wide open, yet it seemed like everyone was still asleep. Astoria wondered if the sedative potions had been a bad idea, since it had led them to sleep through Parkinson’s intrusion. Deciding that they didn’t have time to shut everyone’s doors since the greater problem was ahead of them, Astoria and Flora walked to the dormitory steps. There was no one in the common room, but from the landing, they had a clear view to the parallel hallway of the boys’ dormitories. Their doors were all open, too.

 _How is nobody waking up from this_? Astoria fretted. She knew that not _everyone_ had taken the Dreamless Sleep Potion. There hadn’t been enough to distribute everywhere, let alone ensure that everyone took it properly. Flora cast a few Revealing Charms into the common room. Nothing happened, but neither girl wanted to leave the stairs. Rabastan was a Legilimens, and he could have acquired the Slytherin common room’s password by way of torture even if he wasn’t. Astoria’s concern for her fellow Slytherins was what ultimately made her leave the steps. Flora followed closely behind. Crossing the common room felt like walking through rushing water. It would be easier and safer to turn back. Astoria climbed the boys’ steps with her wand ready to fire.

The sound of glass shattering was not far ahead. Flora joined Astoria’s side as they followed the spiralling hallway and marvelled at the number of people sound asleep in their open dormitories.

“Flora, there’s a spell on them,” Astoria gasped as she passed Draco’s room, where no one stirred. “People who didn’t take the Dreamless Sleep Potion should have awakened when their doors opened. There’s a lot of noise.”

“You’re right. If they took Hestia’s potion, they’d be asleep anyway, but if they didn’t… Damn it… they’d have no protection against dream magic! Parkinson must’ve bewitched them to stay asleep.”

“Are you certain that it’s _Parkinson_ back here?” Astoria demanded as they drew closer to the noise.

“I saw her in our hallway breaking things,” was all Flora could guarantee. “What’s your Foe-Shard doing?”

Astoria checked it once more.

“It has Parkinson now, but… I don’t know, Flora. This feels bad.”

They came upon a fresh pile of blue shards and dust. Pansy Parkinson was facing them. Her hair, which had become increasingly wiry with stress this year, was plaited over her shoulder and tied off with a little pink bow. Her glossed eyes were moving faster than anyone could wilfully glance side to side. As Parkinson spoke incantations, a string of drool fell onto the breast of her frilly nightgown. She swayed her wand back and forth absently. Astoria noticed her feet were not touching the ground.

 _Good God_.

This was the worst Astoria had ever seen someone Imperiused. When Crouch had Imperiused Rhiannon, she had seemed nothing more than a happier version of herself. When Draco confessed that he had Imperiused Madam Rosmerta, he had cast it in such a way that she could still go about her life. The hotel employee Alecto had tricked had only been under it for business purposes. Even Adamina had focused her gaze when under Lofthouse’s curse. Pansy Parkinson, though, was gone. She couldn’t see with her open eyes because she was in rapid-eye movement sleep. She might choke on her own spit. Her head rolled back. Her arm raised at the remaining nazars.

“ _Syssorevounlitho_ ,” Parkinson sleep-talked.

“Oh –– _Protego_!” Astoria screeched, but it only covered her own body. “FLORA!”

“ _Protego_!” Flora said, thankfully in time.

The glass chunks from the nazars crashed together other until a sharp, weaponised ball of glass clattered against itself. Astoria had used this spell in the Astronomy Library and knew there would be no way Parkinson was going to control the path of the boulder. The cutting weapon soon went rogue, driving itself into the walls and knocking out several torches, which caught fire on the rug.

“ _Aguamenti_!” both Flora and Astoria cast to put out the flames before they ignited the whole hallway. The violent, cursed boulder grew larger as it picked up more nazars from students’ open rooms, and glass constantly broke against their Shields. Then the boulder rolled up over Astoria’s Shield, snagging runs like torn hosiery into her protection. She was trying to fortify her Shield again when Flora cried out in surprise. The glass boulder had run its own caster over, leaving her body floating just one inch above the floor, where her blood was dripping profusely.

 _Doesn_ ’ _t feel too nice_ , _does it_ , _Pansy_? Astoria scowled to herself, recalling that Parkinson had once thrown her against a mirror that shattered into the skin of her neck.

The cursed object managed to get through an open dormitory doorway, and Astoria sprinted onward.

“Staunch Parkinson’s bleeding! I have to stop that thing!” she yelled to Flora.

Astoria followed the amalgamation into Montel’s room. He, along with Horatio Pershore, Curtis Evercreech, Sebastian Daley, and Kieran Harper were fast asleep. Curtis, who was closest to the door, had already taken a hit as the boulder rolled across his bed. Astoria couldn’t Reduct it like one was supposed to do with this spell, since the glass chunks would go everywhere. She couldn’t Vanish it either, since it was Dark magic. She had to use reverse logic. She let her own Shield go and re-cast it on the boulder to contain the glass. Its force didn’t change, and it made wood chips out of one of the desks in the room.

Astoria jumped onto Sebastian’s bed and threw herself on the moving Shield, stabbing her wand into its membrane. Her body rolled sideways against it, right in the path of danger, but she Reducted the boulder successfully within its new container before it could pummel her. Everyone round her was under a deep sleeping spell, so once she determined that Curtis wasn’t going to bleed out, she ran back out to the hall. There, she laid eyes on the form of an adult human, a poseur of incubi.

She screamed so hard it hurt. Rabastan had restrained Flora with a sour spell, and her head was stuck in the crook of his elbow. The leather of his wand was pulled taught against her throat. Astoria saw the dent from it in Flora’s skin.

“Bonjour, Greengrass!” Rabastan hollered, choking Flora.

Astoria, once again, was forced to aim to kill.

“Ah –– ah –– ah!” Rabastan shook his head. “I’ll scalp your icky little Carrow in a heartbeat. Drop your wand. You liked mine more anyway.”

Rabastan must have just arrived. His eyes fell on Parkinson, and did he ever laugh. Parkinson would die if she caught even the most affectionate parts of Rabastan’s attention. But she wasn’t floating anymore. Her body was limp on the floor, and her white gown was splashed with red. Astoria seethed with anger and dropped her wand. Flora had been left defenceless as she wasted time healing the worthless Parkinson per Astoria’s command. Was _this_ what being a good person got her? If Flora had forgotten about stupid Parkinson and remained armed…

“I’ll let the Carrow go if you play nicely with me, Greengrass,” Rabastan hummed, rubbing his cheek against the top of Flora’s head.

“What do you want? My Astronomy teacher?” Astoria snapped. “You’re just going to trade out Flora for me and drag me up the tower again. What’s your big plan, Rabastan? Threaten to dice me up if she doesn’t sleep with you? You might as well dice me up now.”

Rabastan’s sharp teeth shone in his smile.

“Astoria, run!” Flora begged, but Rabastan Silenced her.

“Those are all beautiful ideas, Greengrass,” Rabastan relished, trying to make them out to be Astoria’s fault. “Let’s start with you walking over here, and I won’t kill this little worm.”

In self-sacrificing foolishness, Flora squirmed, trying to keep Astoria from getting closer. Well, Flora wasn’t dying on Astoria’s watch. Astoria marched right up to the fiend. Rabastan was dressed to kill had a smell on him Astoria couldn’t place. He gripped Flora by the dressing gown and flung her sideways, then he whipped her hard in the back. Flora’s mouth opened in a scream which had no sound, and her hands traced over the sting. Then she seemed to fall asleep. She was breathing. She wasn’t dead. It must have been…

“The Nightmare Curse, yes, very good, cupcake,” Rabastan injected, and he jumped to grab Astoria. “I do love giving people bad dreams. I’m having that Carrow dream all the fascinating little things she Occludes during the day. Let’s go for a walk, hm?”

Astoria stumbled trying to get up from having her collar pulled over her head, but it wasn’t working. She had to lock her arms on Rabastan’s just to stay on her feet, otherwise she’d end up being dragged on the floor by the hair.

“Why are you using Occlumency, Greengrass? I can turn back round and go slaughter your Malfoy if you don’t open up for me a little. Let’s be nice for me, okay? _Peek-a-boo_!”

Rabastan had folded the leather braid up on his wand and butted it on the back of her head. Astoria’s ears started to ring, and her head shook, but the more she shook, the more her clothes choked her. Her vision blurred in a sea of damask patterns on the rug.

“Oh ho! I could take you to Azkaban for your crimes, Greengrass,” Rabastan purred.

“ _Why don_ ’ _t you, then_?” Astoria shouted as he weaved through her head.

“Oh, you want to go? You’d be so _proud_ to say you’ve wronged us enough to be personally escorted to prison. You’d try to be a beacon of hope for the other prisoners, too. I know your type. So self-righteous! No, _ma voyeuse_ , you humiliated me during our little fight. It’s my turn to humiliate you… You Greengrasses have avoided noble families like ours for most of history. Oh –– oh, and don’t get me _started_ with the Ciels! You Ciels have run from our pursuits for as long as any can remember! I wonder what made you think you’re better than the House of Lestrange.”

Rabastan butted the handle of his wand against her head again, where it would bruise.

“You little hoity-toity, holier-than-thou Greengrass!” Rabastan singsonged. “Tell me what you hate the most, cupcake. The nastiest feeling you have. C’mon, play peek-a-boo with me again. Look at my face. BAD GIRL! DON’T YOU DARE OCCLUDE ME! I’LL KILL DRACO! _LEGILIMENS_!”

Astoria’s brain was sloshing in its skull. She knew she must have been screaming. Professor Sinistra’s spell was never like this. Astoria wondered if she had ever cast the spell this harshly herself. She tugged on Rabastan’s fragranced sleeves involuntarily, and he smacked her knuckles.

“I got it! Ooh la la!” Rabastan’s voice hit her ears from the inside. “You don’t like the reason behind your lives being spared because you’re pureblood? Shouldn’t you be _grateful_ to have your life? Shouldn’t you be _happy_ to have that silver band on your wrist? You’re of better stock! Oh, but you don’t _like_ it. You don’t _want_ to be looked at that way. You’re better than that, _hmmm_? Little Greengrass doesn’t want to raise her babies in the Dark Lord’s reign, no sir! Little Greengrass doesn’t _want_ to do her part for the race of Wizardkind!”

Rabastan threw Astoria from his arms. The whip cracked on her face and drew burning blood. She started Levitating, but only enough for him to throw her to a couch in the common room, which nearly toppled backwards with the force of her hitting it. She grabbed the cushions and sat up on her knees, but the whip cracked against her neck, and she screamed and fell over. There had been no spell behind it –– it just hurt like a bitch.

“I’ve been hard at work crafting my next big nightmare. Oh, it’s been so long since I’ve done this… I can’t wait,” Rabastan said somewhere to the side.

Astoria saw his boots go past her as she finally got her feet under her and stood up, holding her neck tightly and trying to find a way to run. He knocked her back down without effort.

“You’ll never believe how amazing this is, cupcake –– it’s an improved Nightmare Curse, a specialty of mine. I can inject everyone in range with a hallucination of my choosing and give them sleep paralysis. According to my sources, it feels like I’m right on their chests! So let’s see what I can create for my audience tonight. I do like when it’s looks _real_ for them. Don’t worry. I won’t leave you out, Greengrass. I wouldn’t want you to miss the show. You, Astoria, are the star.”

The tail of the whip cracked again, barely missing Astoria’s wet eyes, and she started to drift. She heard Rabastan’s menacing voice utter the incantation, “ _Karabastu_ _Karabasan_ ,” before her body froze up and a great weight crushed her chest. She was unable to escape or wake up. A full-colour nightmare knotted deep in her psyche.

> _A girl with brunette, thickly waving hair stands in the dark. In her hands, she holds an instrument of wonder, a golden gyroscope with a small, glittering hourglass in its centre. It is a godlike tool, permitting navigation of time and rendering the concept childish. The girl hooks it to a chain, and it dangles back and forth as she walks. She comes upon a grand house in the northern countryside, one of the many temporary lairs of the Dark Lord in His younger days. Yes, the house is grand, but it is still not befitting for His Greatness. Nor is the girl, but there is a point to be made. There is Dark magic between the meat of her muscle and the soft of her skin, and the pure blood in her veins is quite capable of hosting magic blacker than age. She hails from the House of Greengrass. By the time of the Dark Lord’s new reign, she is the last one in the country, having been forsaken by the rest. The Greengrasses’ family motto reads, “By Earth, Honour,” but this witch sought things not of this world. Her family knew what stirred within her and left her to her fate. A darling black sheep._
> 
> _The Dark Lord’s cloaked silhouette stood in the doorway to the mansion. His Greatness was not fond of this doxy. Her House was known to bear Squibs. However, lest the last Greengrass waste her blood with those even more tainted, the Dark Lord allowed her presence. He knew all time. He knew all space. He had foreseen the purity of the children He would sire by Astoria Greengrass. She surrenders the Time Turner to Him as she meets Him at the door, and kisses the hem of His robe. He removes His hood, and she is captivated by His handsome youth and smooth, dark hair. He would not always remain in this mortal form. Nor would she wish it upon Him. Many sacrifices of the body must be made to pursue the Dark Arts…_

“ _Stupefy_!”

Astoria, shaken to the bones, jolted awake at the sound of an honest voice. Professor Slughorn had hit Rabastan with a massive Stunning Spell, and his small body hit the stone wall like a fly that had finally failed to evade a swat. Astoria’s burning wounds lit up like fire once more now that she was awake, but they were nothing compared to the shame of the dream that Rabastan had shoved into the minds of her peers.

Astoria felt less than herself. She could not stop shaking. How could someone even _come up_ with an idea so horrible? She and _Voldemort_? Well, if anyone could invent something so dire, it would be the person who tortured Neville’s parents into insanity. The person who stalked Professor Sinistra after nearly twenty years of rejections and rebuffs. The person who had left his own biggest fan bleeding on the hallway floor.

Snape followed Professor Slughorn in, and followed up on his spells as well, cursing Rabastan back and forth. But it was too late –– enough of the shameful dream had been sown already. Rabastan had wanted to humiliate Astoria, feeding not only upon what disgusted her most about pureblood status but also the students’ lingering doubts as to why she alone remained in the country. A mate to Voldemort? Her nausea bubbled. Rabastan invested a frightening amount of energy in personalising these fears. It was because she was connected to Professor Sinistra. It was because he was a sadist. Astoria had no wand to retaliate, only shaking clammy hands. She shoved the side table out of her way and stormed across the room to where the monster lay belly-up. She crouched over Rabastan’s now powerless, pained, and twitching body, and unearthed the metal Muggle instruments he kept along his hips.

That was not the only thing she found. He kept a phial of horrid Amortentia, which Astoria broke hard against the floor. The smell, now pungent, filled her with absolute desire, but in this moment, it was the desire to kill.

As the unholy musk from him entered her nose, he woke, and they met eyes. Behind his dilating pupils lay a greater evil than could be fathomed, even by Astoria’s hardened heart. Rabastan was someone she did not mind kicking when he was down, and he still was too groggy to mind being kicked. She grabbed the sharpest tool she could feel against her hand. She drew back the rusty pick, intending much for his skin, but he caught her wrist at the last moment like it had all been a game of suspense.

“Mmm, your anger feels quite like _hers_ ,” Rabastan whirred softly before Astoria was forcibly swept away by a spell from Snape.

She bewailed being unable to do ill against Rabastan. She protested many, many things as Professor Slughorn held her back and conjured a shock blanket over her hunched shoulders. Snape grabbed Rabastan by the collar and hoisted him face-to-face.

“ _What blasphemy against the Dark Lord_!” Snape spit. “What _filthy_ , _wretched_ _dishonour_ you have done, Lestrange! _All of you_ depart from this school _tonight_ , or I will disclose to the Dark Lord the _slander_ you have committed against him! Did you not realise that _I_ , _too_ , was in range of your spell? Did you _doubt_ I could overcome such a carnival? What went through your dementor-rotted brain, you insolent _scum_?”

Slander against the Dark Lord! What about _Astoria_? What about the horrible accusations she was bound to face in the morning? What about the terrifying thoughts and comments Draco would wake to? What about her sense of safety, her sense of dignity? And what about Flora, lying somewhere with whip-wounds on her back and an even worse nightmare playing through her head? Forget the damn Dark Lord!

For all the havoc he had wreaked, Rabastan finally seemed to put two and two together upon hearing Snape’s threat, and Astoria watched him squirm anxiously. In Death Eater’s terms, Rabastan had indeed defamed their deity figure by advertising him as having relations with a blood-traitor, a Greengrass at that. A Greengrass who had been the closest friend of Slytherin’s Blot, not the lover of Slytherin’s Heir.

It was so farfetched and perverted that Voldemort, the very wizard in question, wouldn’t even have imagined it. Rabastan had acted thoughtlessly for the sake of shock value. Astoria, who would probably have to spend ages undoing the reputation this collective dream had given her, knew that there would be _no_ way for Rabastan to answer to Voldemort for this. Now that his fantasy and fun was over, Rabastan was begging Snape for his life.

“Please, please––” Rabastan cried, and Astoria held the sound of his begging very close.

“Your worthless, selfish life?” Snape hissed. “You have not spent one minute gathering information about Harry Potter, which was your _duty_. You are no better than Stretton, absorbed with self-interest –– no, you are _worse_ than Stretton. Rabastan… I could simply bypass our Lord and go straight to _Bella_ to say what you have done…”

“NO, NO, PLEASE! PLEASE! KILL ME BEFORE THAT! PLEASE! I’LL GO! I’M GOING! PLEASE LET ME GO! I’LL LEAVE!” Rabastan wailed.

“You are not to set foot in my school _ever again_.”

Snape’s voice was terrible enough to chill the whole room.

“Yes, yes, of course, please _DON’T TELL BELLA_!” Rabastan quivered.

Snape cast a ruthless curse that balled Rabastan’s body up in a fœtal position and then hoisted him upside-down into the air, his dress cloak and whip rippling downward. Snape did not say a word to Astoria as he passed her by, only addressing Professor Slughorn.

“Horace, there are wounded students in the boys’ corridor. Please assist them whilst I take out the rubbish. The other students may begin to awaken now that Rabastan’s incapacitated, so please be prepared to handle the situation.”

Professor Slughorn coughed in his throat and clapped his hands together, mentally bracing himself. He muttered sincere apologies to Astoria as he magically dressed her wounds, but she knew it wasn’t his fault. Professor Slughorn had, in fact, magically fortified the common room and warned students about the Lestranges at nauseam. He would have had no way to know Lestrange had still managed to get in by way of an Imperiused helper. Everything had happened so quickly. Once Astoria was physically better (mentally better was out of the question at this point), Professor Slughorn trotted off to the boys’ hallway to aid Flora and Parkinson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you need some comic relief after the disaster that is Rabastan, then I invite you to [wheeze at this as much as I did.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC1nC2iO2Nw)


	20. Missing Person

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 20 - "Protège-moi" by Placebo

Students, freed from magic, started to fill the common room, and, seeing Astoria huddled on the couch in a blanket, they pointedly avoided her. The people who were now awake had either not been able to take the Dreamless Sleep potion or had decided they didn’t “need” it. Everyone quickly concluded that they had had the same dream, and therefore, it must have been a true vision. They talked about Astoria as though she weren’t there, looking right at her. Astoria left the common room to recover her wand. In the hallway, she passed Max Manson, who was strutting round with his hands in his pyjama pockets.

“Did you really sleep with the Dark Lord, Astræa?” Max pressed obnoxiously.

“You know I didn’t, moron,” Astoria said. “It was Rabastan Lestrange––”

“You slept with _Rabastan Lestrange_?” Max asked even louder.

“ _Oh, shut it_! It was Rabastan Lestrange implanting a dream in everyone’s head!”

“Whoa there!” Max smiled. “I wonder how he did that trick. Do you know how? Can you tell me? I’d like to try it.”

“PISS _OFF_ ,” Astoria spelled out for him, and she swept her wand off of the floor.

The boys’ doors were closed now, both from Professor Slughorn’s help and the people who had awakened. Now that she had her wand on her person, her Legilimency made her feel like a sponge. Everyone had such terrible thoughts about her, whether they were supporters of Voldemort or not. Astoria walked back to the common room with her head down, trying to avoid further influx of their feelings and hide her face. Rabastan had got his wish, all right. She was ashamed to be in public.

“Well, that can’t be true,” Astoria overheard a fourth-year girl say. “Astoria Greengrass wouldn’t do that. She was the frontwitch of Pariah, remember? I have her albums.”

“She is already dating a Death Eater, you know!” the girl’s companion argued. “Draco Malfoy!”

“Draco Malfoy’s not the same as You-Know-Who!” the fourth-year said. “Listen, don’t you know her best friend was that Muggle-born? There’s no way!”

“She has a point,” said a fifth-year boy. “I don’t think You-Know-Who would do anything except put Astoria in Azkaban. She’s always been against his cause.”

A whole cluster of arguments started breaking out as Astoria pushed her way through the mess, trying not to be seen.

“She uses Dark magic, that part’s true!”

“Er, so does everyone else these days. There’s no way.”

“I wonder if she’s pregnant right now because of the Time Turner!”

“Pregnant! Ew! I don’t see why we would even be allowed to know that information if it _were_ true. So it’s got to be fake! Death Eaters wouldn’t let us know of that.”

“Professor Sinistra said that’s why we needed those nazars, because Rabastan used dream magic. She told my class! It’s dream magic! He must have messed with our heads! We all had the same dream.”

“Erm, _hello_! Professor Sinistra was married to _Barty Crouch Jr_! She’s on their side! It’s all got to be a trick to hide Astoria’s pregnancy!”

“Yeah, didn’t you hear Bellatrix Lestrange say something like ‘you’re an awful pick for him’ when we were leaving D.A.D.A.? She must have been talking about You-Know-Who!”

“No, she was talking about Draco! Draco’s related to her, I think! Bellatrix wouldn’t want a Greengrass in her family. You know the Greengrasses like Squibs and stuff!”

“Right, and Astoria used to go round yelling at everyone who said the word Mudblood! You-Know-Who would sooner make a baby with Dolores Umbridge!”

“It was _Astoria_ ’ _s_ friends handing out that Dreamless Sleep Potion, though. They were trying to cover it up! They were trying to make it so we wouldn’t know! _I_ didn’t take that stupid potion. Now I know what they were hiding! Astoria’s with the Dark Lord!”

“No, you’re wrong! It was some freak dream the Lestranges wanted us to have so we would turn against her. She’s a blood-traitor. Everyone knows that! She was part of Pariah. And Death Eaters attacked her family!”

“But they spared her at Quennell Park! She’s probably baking the baby as we speak!”

“You’re disgusting! They didn’t _spare_ her; she escaped!”

“Oh yeah? Then tell me why she’s involved with Draco Malfoy.”

“They’ve _always_ been round each other –– I dunno!”

Astoria was incorrect to think that she could run away and hide from this. In fact, trying to get out of the common room was creating another slew of comments about her attempting to hide what happened. People were starting to think she had _just returned_ from the past with a Time Turner! Astoria wanted to stifle this once and for all.

She knew, though, that stating her position out loud would ruin her chances of ever playing it safe round the Death Eaters again. But she had to honour her own beliefs and stand up for herself. No more hiding. No more appeasing Alecto and Amycus. No more pretending to be compliant to make Draco and Professor Sinistra feel like she was safer. It obviously didn’t matter either way –– she was not safe at all. Astoria hoisted herself up on a chair and cast an Amplifying Charm on her voice.

“Hi, everyone,” she tried to say with as little anger as possible.

It felt like she had a thousand eyes on her. She started to get a migraine, and she took a moment to reign in her Legilimency.

“Hi. Sorry. I wanted to say that I had the same dream you did. Erm. I know it seemed real, and I wanted to tell you that it isn’t. I can tell some of you have already made up your minds about me. I know the dream was extremely realistic. I don’t believe in You-Know-Who’s cause. I never have, and I never will. Every day, I miss Rhiannon Clarke. A lot of you bullied her. She had to leave the country with my family. I’ve heard some of you saying the Death Eaters spared me. They didn’t. Their wands were in my face trying to kill me as much as they tried –– and succeeded –– to kill other members of my family.

“I am a blood-traitor. I don’t believe in blood purity. Alecto’s been using propaganda to try to trick people like me into that mindset. Sometimes, it’s even worked on me. Like, I don’t want the oceans and atmosphere to have industrial waste. I don’t like how misogynistic Muggles can be. Things like that! But nobody should be in Azkaban because they’re Muggle-born! I know that announcing this is going to turn some of you further against me. I don’t even care. I’d sooner go to Azkaban than have anyone think I would get involved with You-Know-Who, especially sexually. What the hell was _that_?

“Anyway, Rabastan Lestrange stalks Professor Sinistra, who, yes, married Barty Crouch Jr. That’s why you’ve seen Rabastan send her Howlers. I’m an astronomy nerd, so I’m near her a lot, and that’s why Rabastan came after me. He wanted to put me in danger to manipulate Sinistra, and he wanted to humiliate me. I’m totally ashamed that you had that dream, because I saw it, too. He used a branch of a Nightmare Curse that works remotely in our thoughts and dreams. That’s why we had nazars, but he Imperiused a student to take them out of our rooms. Hestia made Dreamless Sleep Potions to try to protect us. No one here seems to have had that potion. Anyway, I’m not pregnant. That pervert made that up.

“A lot of us are pure-blood. As you can see from tonight, that doesn’t make us safe. Neville Longbottom’s parents were both pure-blood. Hannah Abbott’s mum was pure-blood. Death Eaters kill a lot of pure-bloods. Pansy Parkinson –– we don’t get on because she’s prejudiced –– she’s bleeding pure blood all over the hallway because of Rabastan Lestrange! I don’t like how the Death Eaters objectify us. You see these silver bands we wear? We can’t take them off because they code us based on blood purity. It bothers me how Death Eaters want us to ‘purify the race’ or whatever. Some of you believe in it, and you can go ahead and fight me. But be warned, I _do_ use Dark magic. Why? To protect myself and my friends. I watched my family die. It changed me, but it didn’t change what I believe in. I’m a Mudblood-loving, Squib-loving blood-traitor. There’s nothing that makes me prouder than to say that now! If you think I had sex with You-Know-Who and want to spread rumours about me, go on then! What a stupid joke! Just make sure you tell everyone that sex with him would have been the _most disappointing three minutes ever_.”

Astoria stepped down from her pulpit, certain that she had earned herself a cell in Azkaban. Already, she saw more faces crowding the Foe-Shard bracelet on her wrist. Then, Professor Slughorn came out of the hall with Flora and Parkinson Levitating in front of him. Flora would be under the Nightmare Curse for a long time.

“Miss Greengrass, you should come to the Hospital Wing for your injuries,” Professor Slughorn called to her, then addressed the rest of the students, “as well as anyone who was hurt by the Sleep Paralysis Curse! Please follow me!”

Astoria first went back to her dormitory to make sure the door was still shut. It thankfully was, and because they had taken the Dreamless Sleep Potion, Hestia and Alexa were still safely asleep. Astoria then caught up to Professor Slughorn after she left the common room. Curtis Evercreech, who had a cursed boulder roll over him, followed her, too, without being afraid of her or thinking the dream was true. Astoria kept her eyes on Flora, whose face was scrunched up like discarded parchment. She made frightened noises in her sleep and said things that made no sense. Almost no sense.

The Hospital Wing had been crowded this year due to the Carrows, and now there were even more injured students due to the Lestranges. Madam Pomfrey had to conjure three beds for Astoria, Flora, and Parkinson since all of the equipped beds were full. Astoria felt like she was only taking up space and wasting the Matron’s time. After all, Professor Slughorn had already taken care of her injuries. He simply wanted her to come here for a lie-down. At least this way she got to be next to Flora, and mercifully, Professor Slughorn did the explaining so Astoria wouldn’t have to say a word.

“Well, good riddance to them!” Madam Pomfrey exclaimed upon learning the Lestranges were leaving early.

Astoria refused the Dreamless Sleep Potion the Matron offered her and sat awake in bed with her arms crossed. She watched the Healer medicate and cast spells on Flora, knowing that hours later, Flora would wake to hallucinations. Astoria hoped she would still be next to her when that happened, but with as uncooperative as Astoria was being, Madam Pomfrey might declare that she was perfectly fine and discharge her before then. Madam Pomfrey walked over to Pansy’s bedside and started trying to invigorate her with magic.

“Since you’re staring at me instead of going to sleep, why don’t you tell me what was cast on her?” the Matron said to Astoria.

“The Imperius Curse, but she was also floating above the ground for a while. Her eyes were open and moving like she was in R.E.M.”

Madam Pomfrey sighed something about “Bewitched Sleep” to herself and went to consult the scrolls in her office for a solution for Parkinson. When she came back, she started to rouse Parkinson out of it. Astoria occasionally watched Madam Pomfrey work. Other times, she watched storm clouds move across the black sky through the window and listened helplessly to Flora’s strange murmurs.

Parkinson woke up with a yelp and looked at Flora like she was something unclogged from a shower drain. She, too, refused the Dreamless Sleep Potion, but asked to have it by her bedside for later. Madam Pomfrey threw up her hands and left a phial for Parkinson, then went to make rounds to check on the other students. Parkinson wrapped the blankets tighter over her and drew her knees up. Then she put her head down on them and started crying quietly. Astoria looked back out the window. When the crying stopped, she glanced over to find Parkinson staring at her. Astoria dove into her mind uncontrollably and discovered that Parkinson had apparently spent her free time talking to Rabastan at the door to Astronomy Tower.

“What are you looking at me like that for?” Astoria snapped, even though she had been the one to take information. “I didn’t sit on You-Know-Who if that’s what you’re wondering. _I_ happen to _not_ have a thing for murderous sociopaths.”

Parkinson shut her eyes hard and rubbed them.

“I was wondering if you knew if my roommates were okay…”

“Well, did they take the potion Hestia was handing out?”

“Yeah, er, they did. Does that stop… does that stop this from happening?”

“Yeah, why else would Hestia be giving it out?” Astoria sneered. “You clearly didn’t take any. You could have killed everyone with that curse on you. I hope you realise that.”

“Okay,” Parkinson barely chirped.

She put her head back on her knees and pulled on her braid. Then she started crying again. Astoria looked back out the window.

“Is Draco…?” Parkinson asked anxiously.

“Draco is a brilliant wizard. His magic’s so strong, he Occludes in his sleep. He has to _live_ with Rabastan, remember? _Devine quoi_ , that’s not a good thing, Pansy,” jeered Astoria.

“R-Right…” Parkinson sniffed, and reached for the tissues at her bedside.

Astoria had a front-row seat to the cacophony of Parkinson’s snot. Even worse, Parkinson kept trying to talk to her after the fourth tissue.

“Er, Astoria…?”

“ _What_?”

“What… what all did I… do?”

Huge tears fell onto Parkinson’s knees as she squeezed them tighter. Astoria shifted on the bed and looked at Parkinson, who hid her face again.

“Well,” Astoria said, clearing her throat, “Flora saw you Imperiused. You cast some spell that opened everyone’s dormitory door. Then you Summoned all of Professor Sinistra’s nazars that you could reach, which was more than usual. You Reducted them so Rabastan could use Dark magic. Flora and I woke up because we didn’t take the full dose of potion, and we tailed you to the boys’ dorms. You were, er, floating above the ground. You cast a curse on us that backfired, and you got hurt. Then Rabastan got into the common room whilst I was trying to stop the curse. Flora staunched your bleeding, but she didn’t get everything before Rabastan attacked her. He left you bleeding on the floor and cursed Flora, and then he came after me and put that dream in everyone’s heads.”

Parkinson nodded without looking up. She took the Dreamless Sleep Potion shortly thereafter and snored in Astoria’s ears. The Hospital Wing doors opened quietly, and Astoria stood up. It was Draco. They nearly collided trying to reach each other so fast. Astoria drank in his comfort, his messy hair, his soft pyjamas. She couldn’t let go of him.

“I am so sorry, Astoria,” he rasped.

“Did you have the dream, or did you hear about it?”

“Crabbe and Goyle told me when they woke up… We got into a row… Astoria, _are you okay_?”

“Snape wouldn’t let me attack Rabastan, so I could be a lot better,” Astoria snorted.

“Oh my God,” Draco said for lack of words, and he pulled her tighter, rubbing his hand on her head.

“Let’s have a seat,” Astoria suggested, since she couldn’t exactly breathe against Draco’s chest.

He sat on the edge of her bed and clasped her hands whilst she told him everything from start to finish. He kept saying he was sorry, but Astoria wouldn’t let him take any personal responsibility for Rabastan. Draco then shifted the blame to Parkinson, who was sleeping peacefully at last.

“You know, about Parkinson… just let it go, actually,” Astoria sighed. “She was like a moth to a flame. Just stupidity. I don’t think she’s going to live this down.”

Draco gave the back of Parkinson’s head one final glare. Astoria admired his face even then. He had a nice jawline, especially when it was set like this. His chin was pointy but oh-so cute. She mulled over all of the blood-traitorous, anti-Voldemort things she had announced in the common room and realised something awful: she might really have to let Draco go to keep him safe. After all, it was one thing to announce that the dream wasn’t true, and another thing to say “hey, I’m a major Mudwallower and Voldemort probably lasts three minutes in bed.” There wasn’t a way to come back from _that_ , was there? Yikes.

“Draco…” Astoria pronounced.

“Astoria, nothing that happened tonight changes anything. You’re the most wonderful person I’ve ever known, and I will always be here for you. Through everything,” Draco said.

He wrapped his arm round her waist and held her close. Draco had been an unforeseen source of support and strength for her, even though he answered to those who had caused all of her problems. He was so unlike that. It was iniquitous that Voldemort held him on such a leash. Astoria’s chest ached. There was no way round it; Draco would only jeopardise his safety by staying by her side. Voldemort _lived in his house_. Draco couldn’t be mixed up with Astoria after her outright declarations against Voldemort’s new government. He would kill him. Astoria loved Draco, and she had to do the right thing. She choked up with the words right on her tongue, but Snape rushed into the Hospital Wing and marched straight to her. His usual pomp and affectedness had been ripped from his appearance, and he presently spoke with absolute candour.

“Miss Greengrass, you need to give me your memories about your encounter with Rabastan immediately, and everything you know about his pursuit of Professor Sinistra. I have just been to inform her that the Lestranges are no longer here,” Snape panted desperately. “She is not in Astronomy Tower.”


	21. Trapped

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible."_ \- A. Dumbledore
> 
>  _"I sought my image  
>  in the scorching glass,  
> for what fire could damage  
> a witch's face?"_  
> \- "On Looking Into the Eyes of a Demon Lover," S. Plath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 21 - "oh baby" by LCD Soundsystem
> 
> **Content warnings: sexual harassment, implied attempted sexual assault**

Severus Snape interrogated every patrolling Death Eater regarding the whereabouts of Professor Sinistra. None of them had any information, and they were all ordered to search the castle and grounds as a matter of critical importance. Most of them incorrectly assumed that Professor Sinistra was much like her revered late husband and willingly helped out. Snape put Professor Slughorn in charge of informing the caretaker and the teachers, who would soon be similarly enlisted for the search. Draco, whose nightly shift was approaching anyway, took pride in doing something other than trying to track the Dumbledore’s Army kids and enforcing the zero-tolerance policy for being outside of the common rooms. Whilst Snape tore through the castle alone, Professor Slughorn met with the teachers, Astoria, and Draco to go over search routes. He would search the dungeons and basements, whilst Professor Sprout was in charge of the ground and first floors. The other Heads of House would search their respective towers and the access floors. Astoria noticed that Amycus and Alecto were not present and wondered if Snape had interrogated them thoroughly enough.

The House-elves, who could use their own version of Apparition within the castle, were an extremely valuable source of help for covering more ground. However, Winky was too panicked to use magic and started crying about losing her whole family. Another House-elf, who Astoria believed was named something like Dobbin or Dobby, took care to comfort Winky. Astoria felt guilty leaving her like that, but she and Draco had to hurry. They were in charge of the entire third floor. In the back of Astoria’s mind, she doubted that it was a high-priority area. Perhaps Snape and Slughorn had placed them here so that they wouldn’t have to be the ones to find Professor Sinistra…

 _Don_ ’ _t think that_.

Astoria wondered how long everyone would search before they would check the Forbidden Forest or the prison under Malfoy Manor. Those seemed more likely than the third floor of the castle, at least. There weren’t any suspicious signs as she and Draco searched floor to ceiling. Astoria was struck with an idea that she hoped was not too late.

“Draco, we should go wake up Parkinson. She has memories of talking to Rabastan!”

“What? How do you know that?”

“I — they were on her mind when she was crying next to me. Crying people have really loud memories, okay?”

“Oh, I’m not blaming you for Legilimency! I think that’s a brilliant idea. We’ll have to really shake her to wake her up from that potion, though. I don’t know how Madam Pomfrey will feel about that,” Draco mentioned as they went to the Hospital Wing again.

“I haven’t been able to get on Madam Pomfrey’s good side since I got here, so there’s nothing to lose,” Astoria said. “I wish I’d thought of this sooner.”

“It’s all right, you were nervous. I never would have thought… She was actually _talking_ to him?” Draco shivered.

“Well, I’m sure he didn’t reveal his grand kidnapping plans to Parkinson, but I would like to extract her full memory to see if there are any clues,” Astoria explained. “I know from scratching the surface that she spent time with him whilst he was in front of Astronomy Tower today. That means that he was still trying to get to Professor Sinistra’s quarters at that time. So, something must have changed between his conversation with Parkinson and when he showed up in our common room.”

“All right. Let me handle this,” Draco said, and had to play both the “I’m a Death Eater” and “I have orders from Snape” cards to Madam Pomfrey to get back in and see Parkinson.

He knocked on Parkinson’s shoulder with the back of his hand like one might knock on a door. Draco’s expression made it quite clear how disgusted he was with her. Parkinson’s obsession with Rabastan had been the final straw in their relationship, after all.

“Hm? Wha? Draco? Oh, D-Draco, oh, er,” Parkinson stuttered.

She shot upwards and covered the view of her bandages from him.

“Pansy, this is very important. Professor Sinistra has gone missing. Do you know anything about that from your conversations with Rabastan Lestrange?” Draco asked.

“She’s missing?” Parkinson said, looking round the room stupidly. “H-How did you know I was talking to… It wasn’t what you think! He… I just—”

“Pansy, that’s _not_ important right now!” Draco shouted.

Madam Pomfrey glowered at him and cast a Muffliato Charm on the other patients so their rocky slumbers would not be further disturbed.

“Pansy, if you don’t tell me what was going on, Astoria is going to have to use Legilimency on you.”

“Legilimency! How does _she_ know Legilimency‽ I’m so sick of this mind-reading rubbish! I don’t have anything to say — I don’t know about Professor Sinistra! All I know is that Rabastan was making noise by Astronomy Tower, and that was how I, er, how I found him the other day… Well, he introduced himself and said she owed him for all the favours he’d done. I thought that was sort of odd, but other than that, nothing!”

“What did he say _today_? Did he _do_ anything differently?” Draco pressed.

“Well, he Imperiused me, so how am I supposed to know anything,” Parkinson grumbled. “ _I_ bet Sinistra left Hogwarts to get away from Astoria annoying her all the time.”

Astoria raised her wand at Parkinson’s forehead and cast her spell quicker than the little snot could react. Parkinson was not an easy mind to navigate, and Astoria ended up with second-hand befuddlement from the effects of the Dreamless Sleep Potion in Parkinson’s system. The way the protective potion was harshly working against Astoria made her aware of how she had cast the spell, and she tried to soften her approach. A few salient memories about the day’s encounter with Rabastan surfaced after extensive, gentle combing.

> _I find Rabastan in his usual spot by Astronomy Tower. He has a chair drawn up and a softcover book in his hands called_ Dimensional Magic for Beginners _. Without trying to, I chuckle at the title. Rabastan looks up from his book and smiles at me._
> 
> _“Now,_ what _is so funny, Miss Pansy?” he says softly. “Wait — I know. You think someone like me shouldn’t have something for beginners, is that it? Doesn’t everyone start somewhere? What do_ you _know about dimensional magic, then, young lady?”_
> 
> _“Oh, well, just means of transportation and the Extension Charm,” I giggle. “That’s it, though. We don’t learn much else in school.”_
> 
> _“Exactly. That’s because it’s tightly regulated by the government. And this is beyond advanced Arithmancy. Did you take Arithmancy, Pansy?”_
> 
> _“Er, no,” I say, embarrassed because a lot of the smart girls took it._
> 
> _“I also didn’t take that class, so I have to start somewhere, right? Here,_ _ma beauté, let’s get you a seat.”_
> 
> _“Oh, er, I really—” I stammer._
> 
> _I know I shouldn’t be here. I have class. The last thing I need is for people to wonder where I am when I’m here. Here_ again _. I don’t know why I keep doing this, talking to him. Maybe Draco was right about me._
> 
> _“Aw, Pansy, you know you want to! Come, have a seat with me. I don’t bite. Well, not usually.”_
> 
> _I can’t stop myself. He’s so charming. He’s not exactly what I imagined. His voice is higher, and he’s so small. It’s actually cute how small he is. He’s skinnier than me, too. He was in Azkaban so long. I can’t even believe he’d talk to me. I’m just a random girl. Rabastan dog-ears his book and looks at me with those amazing eyes_ …

Parkinson’s memory degraded into waxing about Rabastan, so Astoria tried to turn the initial imagery over again between their minds. She focused on Rabastan’s book. Dimensional magic? As in, changing the dimensions of the physical world? Is that how he got into Astronomy Tower? Was Rabastan capable of performing something like that after a glance in a handbook? Astoria dropped the spell and tuned out Parkinson’s yelling at her.

“Draco, we have to go! Rabastan used some sort of space manipulation to get into the tower. It’s the same field of magic as the Undetectable Extension Charm!” she said over Parkinson’s angry voice.

Astoria and Draco left the Hospital Wing running.

“I don’t get how that’s going to help us find her,” Draco said. “I mean, we could go tell Snape, and maybe he’ll know something.”

“That’s exactly what we’re doing! Rabastan must have used the same sort of spell Professor Sinistra uses on her own house. She rearranges and adds rooms all the time — she does that to prevent Legilimency and that remote Sleep Paralysis trick he can do. I’m thinking he must have wiggled his way into the tower through a created room. Maybe _she_ ’ _s_ in a new room, too!”

Astoria and Draco didn’t know where to start on their search for Snape, so they went upstairs. Ahead of them in a fourth-floor corridor, Professors Vector and Babbling were casting Revealing Charms into the rooms.

“Excuse me, have you seen Professor Snape recently?”

“He was checking the bridge last we saw,” said Professor Babbling. “Why, did you find anything?”

“No, we wanted to ask him a question,” Astoria said.

“Well, he might not be there anymore,” Professor Vector mentioned.

Astoria thanked them and changed direction once again. She and Draco were running so quickly that the halls became a loud instrument from their feet. Snape was no longer on the bridge, but they did find him nearby.

“Professor!”

Snape was washed of all colour. He had been very particular about being addressed as “Headmaster” rather than Professor this year, but this time, he was unconcerned.

“Professor Snape,” Astoria said again, “We may have figured out that Rabastan entered Astronomy Tower using dimensional magic. We, er, were thinking he might have made new rooms or something.”

The more Astoria tried to articulate her idea, the harder it became. It didn’t help that she had endured four years of Snape’s unimpressed looks before his current one.

“Er, I was of mind of the way her house is set up, with rooms enclosed on all sides, and—”

“I know,” Snape cut her off. “He likely used the castle’s changing architecture to his advantage, _if_ that is what has occurred.”

Snape either held enough faith in her theory or enough desperation to change his searching method. He drew his wand along the floor, wall, ceiling, and then back down the other wall, creating a glowing threshold through which the other side of the hallway was no longer visible. He heaved a disgusted groan in front of the threshold. It seemed like he was about to step into it, but didn’t quite want to. Astoria was worried that Snape’s venturing into a new dimensional field would be a waste of valuable time and understood his hesitation.

“Professor Snape, is that place the reason the rooms are able to move in the castle?” Astoria asked.

“To call this a ‘place’ is terribly erroneous. Dimensional magic is one of the most complex arts known to man, combining both charmwork and transfiguration.”

Snape might have nitpicked her choice of words, but she had basically figured it out. When he disappeared beyond the threshold and did not come out the other side, Astoria moved to follow him. Professor Sinistra had to be in some hidden, cloistered room. She _had_ to be.

“Astoria, what do you think you’re doing‽” Draco said, intercepting her.

“I’m going to look for Professor Sinistra, obviously!” replied Astoria frantically.

“You don’t even know what’s back there — or _in_ there, or whatever that place is!”

“Well, it’s spare magical space in the architecture! That’s how the rooms change from time to time.”

“Yeah, but what’s that _mean_?” Draco questioned.

“I don’t know, but Snape walked in, so he must know how to navigate it.”

“All right, first of all, he’s playing Headmaster, so of course he knows about the moving rooms. Secondly, he’s the one who opened this… this _portal_ thing… but _you_ didn’t! You don’t know what you’re doing!” Draco exclaimed, holding her by the shoulders.

“Draco, if Rabastan used a dimensional spell by looking at a beginner’s handbook, I’m sure I can manage to at least look round for the professor. I’ll be more help in there than on the third floor! Please, let me do this!” Astoria entreated.

Draco’s shoulders slumped, and the sateen collar of his dressing gown fell. Both of them were tired and lost in a whirlpool of the unknown. Yet even though they argued different points, Astoria and Draco had not been on different sides for quite a long time.

“You say ‘let me do this’ like you’d actually listen to me,” Draco sighed, brushing her hair behind her ear. “Let’s both go, then. Hold on to my hand and _do not_ let go. I have no idea what’s in there.”

“Well, I highly doubt it’s a cliff, Draco,” Astoria said, gripping his hand and looking at the glowing light ahead of her.

She put only her free hand through it at first to try to test the waters. All sensation in her hand instantly disappeared.

“Well? Do you feel anything?”

“Er… no, I don’t feel anything,” Astoria said truthfully, but she crafted her tone to sound more like “I don’t feel anything wrong” as opposed to “I have totally lost feeling in my hand.” Draco seemed to fall for it, and they walked through the light.

Astoria regained feeling in her hand once her whole body was in the same sort of dimension. The nerves in her feet told her that she was standing on the same floor, but everything round her was pitch-black. She squeezed Draco’s hand. There was absolutely nothing to see except the glow from the threshold. It cast no light to anything else, including her own body or Draco’s.

“Okay, I don’t like this,” Draco said.

“Let’s light our wands again.”

“My wand hand is holding your hand,” Draco said, “and I’m not letting go.”

“Oh, that’s right. I’ll just do it. _Lumos_ ,” said Astoria.

It was very bizarre. Although Astoria saw the light from her wand, she could not see her hand just beneath it. When she moved the light round, she could not see Draco.

“Please don’t poke me.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t see where you are.”

“I can’t see myself, either. I don’t like this. Let’s turn back.”

“Well, I’m not _fond_ of this, Draco. Let me call for the Professors, and then we’ll turn back. I only wanted to try,” Astoria said. “Professor Snape! Hello! Headmaster! It’s Astoria, we’re by the threshold! Are you all right? _Hello_ , Professor Sinistra! Are you in here? Professor Sinistra!”

“ _Greengrass_ , _WHAT are you doing_ ‽” Snape’s voice echoed from somewhere, but Astoria had no sense as to whether he was far or close.

 _Well_ , _you didn_ ’ _t SAY not to follow you_ , Astoria thought.

“We’re trying to help! How do you search this place, sir?” she called.

“It’s not a _place_! Agh!” Snape boomed. “How much have you already walked?”

“We’re—” Draco started, but Astoria interrupted.

“We’ve been walking for a while and wanted to know what to do!” she lied. “We can’t see anything!”

Snape said some extremely wrathful words that echoed everywhere. Then he came up with a plan, which functioned as the answer Astoria was looking for.

“Greengrass, _listen to me carefully_. You are to call forth a single room and take a seat in it with Malfoy. You are to _remain_ there until I come to get you. I cannot emphasise enough how much trouble you have got yourself into. You will say _Mutata room_ with your wand up, and find yourself there. I assume it will be a classroom or closet of some sort. It doesn’t matter. You are to _sit your rump down and stay there_.”

“Understood, sir!” Astoria called.

She tugged Draco slightly outward from the light of the threshold, where they could still see it.

“ _Mutata room_.”

As Snape had said, a room did appear around her, which was excellent news for her and Draco. They could see each other and walk about without feeling like they would step into oblivion.

“I think I’ve seen this room before on one of my patrols — no, I’m certain I have!” Draco said, surprised at the workings of the castle. “Yes, there’s that crack in the wall and the old-fashioned desk. I didn’t know it was one of the ones that moved about.”

Draco took one of the seats available and asked Astoria why she wasn’t.

“I’m going to keep going through rooms until we find the one she’s in,” Astoria said impatiently. “That was the whole point of telling Snape we were already far into the void. I wanted to find out his trick for navigating this place.”

“Are you serious, Astoria? When he finds out, he’ll kill you!” Draco protested.

“Listen, Draco, I do what’s necessary to get things done. Snape won’t kill me — your nutty aunt might try after tonight’s fiasco, though.”

“Astoria, don’t say those things! Rabastan wouldn’t dare let her know about that dream he gave people.”

“How do you think he explained their early departure to her in the middle of the night? They had two more days here!”

“She didn’t want to be here anyway,” Draco said feebly, apparently not having thought of the long-term consequences of Rabastan’s actions on Astoria’s safety. “Oh, Merlin… This is bad, isn’t it…?”

“Yes, but regardless, I’m going to keep casting, so please stand up and hold on to me. _Mutata room_.”

The room they were in, along with the security of it, ripped like a thread above them and fell away at their sides into absolute nothingness. In its place came another room, which was, as Snape warned, an old broom closet with no space to move. Astoria cast the spell again and ended up in a broken-looking hallway that had a turn at a vertical right angle and an empty window in the floor. She went through these spare areas of the castle so quickly that she started to become motion-sick. It felt like milder Portkey travel, and Draco held her hand so tightly that she got pins and needles. She was about to slow her rate of casting when a short hallway manifested upon them. It had creaky, crooked flooring and only one door.

“Erm, Astoria, this might actually be…”

Astoria noticed she had been holding her breath. She nodded at Draco.

“I think you’re right,” she whispered.

The floor beneath them was rickety, like it would drop off into the blackness. Astoria placed her hand on the old brass doorknob and twisted it to see if it was locked. It was not. But she didn’t open it. All of her determination and optimism had vanished as she pictured the mutilators Rabastan kept as a tool belt. She loved Professor Sinistra. This could not have happened.

“I’ll go first,” Draco said with a frog in his throat.

He let go of Astoria’s hand and stepped ahead of her. With caution, he cracked the door and peered inside. Astoria bunched up her nightgown into a knot just to have something to squeeze now that his hand was gone.

“What’s in there?” she whispered.

“Shh,” Draco said, and Astoria’s spine shook.

He opened the door a little more and shone a wand light in. His eyes affixed to something Astoria could not behold.

“I see her. She’s alive!” Draco said with relief.

He swung the door open and Astoria clambered round it. Even though she could see in the dim room, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. The golden embroidery of Professor Sinistra’s dressing gown spread out on either side of a tall frame. Her knees were peeking out between the frame’s two clawed feet, and she gripped one hand on the gold edge. Based on her lack of a reaction to Astoria and Draco’s entrance, and of course, her lack of ability to escape, she must have been deep in a spell. There was a chill dankness to the room compared to the hallway when the pair stepped inside. Carefully, they walked up to Professor Sinistra’s side. She was badly spellbound. Her forehead rested against the glass of the huge mirror; she seemed to be looking her reflection directly in the eye. Compared to the violent grip she had on the mirror’s frame, the hand she pressed to the glass had a gentle caress. Astoria tried talking to her even with little hope that Professor Sinistra would respond. She was just so happy that she was alive. She would have hugged the professor, but she was afraid it would startle her.

“Oh, when you said her name, she moved her eyes,” Draco noticed. “Perhaps keep talking to her? Er. _Ahem_. Professor Sinistra, it’s Draco. Astoria’s here, too. We can get you out of this room.”

Professor Sinistra’s eyelids drooped, as she obviously had no plans to get up. With utmost gentleness, Astoria placed a hand on her shoulder. Professor Sinistra took her hand off the glass and clasped Astoria’s hand so fast that it made Astoria jump, but her forehead remained on the mirror, and she did not otherwise move.

“We might have to get Snape,” Astoria said with acute dread. “I could pretend this was the first room we found, I suppose.”

“Er, maybe that would work, so long as you don’t make eye contact with him,” Draco said uncertainly. “Isn’t there something we could try? Let’s look, there’s writing on the frame up there.”

“Be careful about stepping in front of it, Draco,” Astoria said, haunted by Professor Sinistra’s rapt expression.

Draco nodded and slowly scooted behind Professor Sinistra to shine light on the golden frame. Astoria tried to get a peek from her angle, but it didn’t work well. Draco was doing fine in front of the mirror since he was so focused on the writing, so she joined him. She was a bit confused; she saw herself and Draco in the glass, but they weren’t in pyjamas. She tried not to look the glass too long, fearing a curse, and instead looked at the writing. It said:-

 _Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi_.

“I took Ancient Runes,” Astoria yawned. “Perhaps it’s a transliteration. In Middle English, stra is straw. Erm, an ube is a sweet yam, but that’s a loan word…”

“You know, something tells me this isn’t about yams,” Draco said, looking at her fondly.

She smiled back at him.

“Fair point.”

As they tried to figure out the writing, it became increasingly difficult not to peruse the glass itself. It was a very tricky play on their reflections, indeed. In the glass, they weren’t in their pyjamas, and Professor Sinistra was not slouched on the floor. In fact, Professor Sinistra was not even in front of them in the reflection, but somewhere beyond their heads, unrolling beautiful celestial maps. Other figures in between started to become clear as well. Astoria saw her parents all dressed for a portrait, and Daphne, totally uninjured. Rhiannon waved at her so vigorously that Astoria was nearly tempted to turn round to see her in the room. Hestia and Flora were behind Rhiannon, awake and happy. Was it possible for her three friends to be so happy after such childhoods? She wanted it to be true. The image was so dynamic. All of her other loved ones seemed to be moving in and out of the frame to say hello to her, though she and Draco were still in the front. What was he holding in his arms? A pillow? A cat? When did he start holding something? Astoria looked at the real-life Draco next to her. He was still in his pyjamas and not holding anything except the lit wand to read the writing. Although, he, too, had succumbed to temptation of looking in the mirror.

“It’s like a reverse Foe-Glass,” Astoria said.

She looked at her wrist to compare the two images, but the Foe-Shard wasn’t working on account of her being in a strange dimension. Back in the mirror, though, there were some startling developments. Draco was now holding two pillows in the mirror — wait, they weren’t pillows at all! Were those really…? Were those really their…? Oh, God.

Her heart jolted miserably as she looked everything thrice over. Her parents’ hair had greyed handsomely, and Daphne was a beautiful woman. Astoria and Rhiannon looked older, too, and were laughing about some joke not yet told.

“Er, Draco…”

“I think you’re right about it being a reverse Foe-Glass,” he said warmly.

He took her hand again. She nearly cried. In the mirror image, he gave her the older of the two babies to hold whilst he still scooped the younger, and he took her free hand in his. It was so beautiful an image to her that it was eerie.

 _I’m cursed_. _I can’t have this_. _I’m cursed_.

“It’s like my parents are standing there with us. Oh no, not Theodore,” Draco laughed.

Astoria didn’t see his parents anywhere in the image, but she did see Theodore. She was considerably relieved that Draco wasn’t seeing what she was seeing, because her level of interest in it was growing embarrassing.

“Theodore has a pile of books from what I can see,” she observed.

“In mine, he has a damn _haircut_ ,” Draco grinned. “Er… you and I sort of look different as well. Do we, er, seem… er… different when you look at it?”

“We have proper clothes,” Astoria said, resting her head on Draco’s shoulder. “Come to think of it, my hair is exactly the way I want it.”

“It looks like we really have our lives together in mine! We look, er… older. I was almost worried this mirror would make us old if we stood in front of it.”

“Oh, it might, if we stay here forever. We’ll have to think of something to tell Snape about Professor… Professor Sinistra!”

Astoria had spoken calmly at first, but it dawned on her that she had totally forgotten about Professor Sinistra’s condition whilst she was looking in the mirror. That was a bad sign. Astoria put her hand back on the professor’s shoulder, but she wouldn’t budge. Could Astoria and Draco end up in her condition if they stayed longer?

“Astoria,” Draco said a bit oddly. “I’m starting to think this shows our future. Have you heard of catoptromancy? Trelawney said it’s a type of advanced divination. I think that’s what this tool is. Look again, there we are, we… we’re… er…”

The _future_? Was Astoria really going to reunite with her family and survive the war like it showed in the mirror? She studied it again, in spite of herself… Everything was so wonderful and perfect that it was hard to believe it could really be her future. She wanted to know more. She had never even taken Divination, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have possessed Daphne’s skill in it. Was it really this fascinating a subject? If Astoria looked in the mirror long enough, could she divine how to _achieve_ this image?

No, something was not right. Uncle Faunus was in the glass with his whole family, alive and well… The mirror version of Professor Sinistra had set aside her celestial maps and had joined both hands with Barty Crouch Jr, openly and happily, as if he had never once betrayed her trust. The dead were right there in the mirror. Astoria shook Draco’s arm in real life, and he responded with an irritated grunt.

“Draco, this is Dark magic!” she panicked. “It’s a trap! It’s going to hypnotise us if we stay here!”

“What?” Draco protested, but when he backed away from Astoria, he nearly tripped on Professor Sinistra’s long gown, and finally came to his senses.

“It’s got to be Dark magic! Remember, _Rabastan_ ’ _s_ the one who put it here! Oh, how stupid… we almost fell for it, too! Move Professor Sinistra _now_!”

Draco cast a Locomotion Charm on Professor Sinistra and moved her away from the mirror. As if Astoria didn’t have proof enough, the professor started yelling horrible things at him and reached her arms out to the mirror in fierce starvation of it. Astoria raised her wand to the mirror and found herself completely unable to cast anything. It would be like breaking the image of her family. It would be like destroying her chances at the reality inside the mirror. She could absolutely not crack the faces of her family, whom she would have given anything to be with… of Draco, who smiled back at her, free of all of his pain at last…

Astoria shook hot tears out of her eyes and went to the back of the mirror, where no such ensnarement presented.

“Draco, shut your eyes tight! Actually, cover Professor Sinistra’s eyes, too!” she said, and gave him one last moment. “ _Reducto_!”

The huge mirror broke into chunks, and white dust puffed out through the dark room. Chunks of glass were _not_ as good as gone, though, as Astoria had learned through the many iterations of Moody’s Foe-Glass. She held one eye closed as she Vanished all the remaining pieces. Her adrenaline surged, but when it relaxed, she had an insurmountable feeling of dread. Something had fallen from the wall when her curse had shaken the room. It was a piece of parchment, and Astoria brought it up to the light. The letter was written in extremely refined, even script, but had gross errors of spelling.

> _My dear Aurora,_
> 
> _I hope when I changed your room to this room it was not to scarey. Now I will be abl to reech you but in the mean time I leave you with this leter. You will find your self in front of a meer I found my self in front of many many years ago. It shows you every thing you culd ever want. Do I have to make it obveus? When I was yung here I saw you. I saw you, Aurora. And me. And we were on top of the world. It was a youtopia where every thing was as it shud be. That writing on the frame is backwords. It says ‘I show not your face but your heart’s desire.’ Aurora I have lived my whole life acording to this picture in this meer. It is profetic. I know you are not going to see me in it, not yet, but I wanted you to have this expeerenc. So you understand my drive to have you. I am not crazy. You and me are really in there ruling over the leser peple. You and me do all kinds of things in this meer. Now you know how it feels. I alredy know this is not enuf to get you to take me so I am taking the Green grass girl hostije. I will loor her out with a dream. I have Pansy Parkisn taking out your lucky charms. I know you have given those charms out becuse of me. I’ll be here to get you shortly and we can set this strait btween us some where more comferble. I know the dementor isn’t very romantic. I just wanted to make sure you hang about here till then._
> 
> _Rabastan_

Astoria drew a deep breath. She stuffed the letter into her pocket as a wet film seemed to descend upon her skin.

 _The dementor_.

Astoria blasted her Lighting Charm at full force into the room, which she should have done first thing. Oh, how stupid she had been, how stupidly and wrongly she had done everything. Above them, almost as if affixed to the ceiling like a mockery of a religious _objet d’art_ , was the creature. Astoria had never seen the precise details of the lamprey face before that moment and could have vomited. How had they not even noticed it? Was it the effects of that mirror? Astoria mustered the magic her life depended on and forcibly moved both Draco and Professor Sinistra from the room, until they tumbled across the rickety hallway. The dementor then descended, and Astoria realised her folly. This whole time it had been still, and it had only been commanded to _move_ upon Professor Sinistra’s exit, which would explain how they had all survived this far. Astoria had sharply decreased their chances of surviving any further.

“ _AGH_!” she screamed, enraged as she darted from the room with the dementor in pursuit. “ _EXPECTO PATRONUM_!”

It didn’t work, not even at the incorporeal level. That only made her future attempts less likely to succeed. As the monster drew closer, she started losing her faculties. Corpses, corpses of her family… body parts, a Horcrux beneath the earth of Quennell Park… And Rabastan appeared, his eyes animalistic but full of self-saving excuses. His tongue rolled over his thin upper lip.

“ASTORIA! _EXPECTO PATRONUM_! _EXPECTO PATRONUM_! _EXPECTO PATRONUM_!”

That was Draco, somewhere off. She would have to leave him come morning on account of her statements against the government. They would never end up the way they were in the mirror, never…

“ _Expecto Patronum_ ,” she must have said as a ditch effort to survive. The hallway was very close quarters, and the only reason she hadn’t changed the room once again was the knowledge that the dementor would come with them, and it would be all black. They wouldn’t even see their demise coming in the dimension of no space. They would have been left to float in the blackness, starving to death in vegetative helplessness. And that was her fate now, albeit in a dimly lit, magical hallway. But it just _couldn_ ’ _t_ happen to Professor Sinistra. Astoria had done so much to get her out of here. Was it really for nothing? Was there really so much Dark magic in her body that she could not even cast a Patronus? Rabastan might have accused her of terrible things, but her Dark magic did not mean she was a Dark witch. She was using it to protect people. The people she had seen alive and well in the mirror. It was fake, but it was a drive. Even though not all of it could be true, _some_ of it could if she would just get through tonight…

“ _EXPECTO PATRONUM_!” Astoria said with the dementor’s fabric against her face, and again it did not work, but that didn’t matter — Draco and Professor Sinistra were not able to cast the thing, and she had to do it. She, the girl no one expected to be able to go to school. _She_ could do it.

“ _EXPECTO PATRONUM_!”

Feathers like the sun’s white morning rays spread between her and the wraith, arching into a massive crescent of delicate but frightening design. Dozens of eyes, not unlike Professor Sinistra’s nazars, dressed the tips of the feathers, and before the arc stood the beautiful, crowned bird. It was the peacock, _Pavo_ , named for the one in the sky.

The dementor made a sucking noise, though it took in no food from Astoria. It cowered away from the Patronus like a cellar insect with a light shone upon it. Pavo cornered the creature back into the room, and Astoria looked over her shoulder to find that Professor Sinistra had gathered her wits. The professor created an emergency opening, a spell which she alone could do amongst the three of them.

“We’ll leave through here!” Professor Sinistra exclaimed.

Astoria grabbed hold of the professor and Draco, and they hurried out into blackness. Professor Sinistra’s wand lit up with a magnificent rainbow, which she cast back into the room through the hatch she had created. The room began to dissolve into the abyss.

“Did you get rid of the whole room?” Astoria gasped.

“Yes, and that particular dementor will never resurface in Hogwarts or anywhere else on Earth,” Professor Sinistra responded.

They saw the glowing light of the threshold Snape had created and stepped through the illusion of zero-gravity to reach it. Professor Sinistra sent Draco and Astoria through first, then stepped close behind them. Astoria had not realised the extent of her dizziness until she was back in the solid castle once more. Professor Sinistra poked her head back into the light, calling for Snape, though no sound came through. Snape could hear it though, and he quickly followed her voice, for he came tumbling out of the barrier like a bat from a cave.

Snape traced a reversal spell across the barrier until it disappeared and then turned back to Professor Sinistra. For once, Severus Snape made absolutely no remarks and asked no questions. He reached his gangling arms round Professor Sinistra and let out a single cry into her shoulder. She tucked the loose hairs on his face behind his ear, and he didn’t swat her away, or make a face, or anything. They looked at each other closely, sifting through everything they would never articulate. The longer the professors stayed that way, the more their breathing matched. It seemed they had been so afraid of desecrating the memory of late loves that they were only just now understanding that it was possible to love a dear friend.

Astoria wiped her tear-burnt eyes and slumped onto the floor, glad that it was there. Draco sat down by her side against the wall. Exhausted, she lay sideways and balled herself up as comfortably as possible. She dropped her head onto Draco’s knee, stealing another moment.


	22. Cold Eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 22 - "When That Head Splits" by Esben and the Witch
> 
> In my opinion, this is the most untoward chapter plotted in the series; please read the content warnings for this chapter and proceed at your own discretion.  
>  **CONTENT WARNINGS: sexual harassment of a minor; physical torture; non-graphic BUT still highly uncomfortable eye stuff; psychological abuse; forced physical touch of a minor (face, cheek, hands, shoulders, neck); extended periods of being unable to move**
> 
> \----
> 
>  _"One need not be a chamber to be haunted,  
>  One need not be a house;  
> The brain has corridors surpassing  
> Material place."_  
> \- "Ghosts," E. Dickinson
> 
>  _"Adorable sorceress, do you love the damned?"_  
>  \- "The Irreparable," C. Baudelaire

It was bad enough not having Rhiannon in the dorm. Now Flora’s bed was empty. Astoria, Hestia, and Alexa slept through all their classes. Classes didn’t matter much anymore.

Flora was almost certainly still stuck in Rabastan’s Nightmare Curse, but they were going to the Hospital Wing to check on her anyway. Alexa still had some sense of responsibility and brought along a textbook to read. Astoria though, imagined their upcoming hours to consist of helplessly listening to Flora sleep-talk her nightmares. Astoria frankly didn’t want Hestia have to hear her, but there was no way to un-invite Flora’s own sister. They walked upstairs in silence, and the exercise did nothing to warm them in the January cold. An unpleasant surprise awaited them at the Hospital Wing.

Alecto was standing against the closed door with her toes to the edge and her ear against the wood, tracing a fingertip in one of the panels. The girls did not take another step upon spotting the witch. Who would have thought she would be concerned enough for Flora to show up here? But she acted like a vampire at a threshold and did not enter.

“Hestia,” Alecto called, “go in there and see how Flora is.”

“You’ve been standing here, why don’t you tell _me_?”

“Hestia.”

Hestia walked on ahead since stepping past Alecto was the only way to see her sister. Astoria and Alexa followed suit.

“Not you,” said Alecto, grabbing Astoria’s shoulder and holding her back. Her eyes remained in Astoria’s until the door closed behind Hestia. Then she took one look at Alexa and said, “You. Leave.”

Alexa was reluctant, but she didn’t need to be told twice. Astoria turned to follow her roommate, but Alecto’s nails dug.

“You stay.”

After about three minutes of no news and sweating, Alecto pounded on the door with the amount of force she wanted to use against Astoria’s face, and yelled, “Hestia! _Hestia_! How’s Flora‽ _HESTIA_!”

“Good Heavens, stop your screaming.”

It was not Hestia but Madam Pomfrey who came to the door. Her wand was drawn for offensive magic, the first time Astoria had seen the Healer in such a stance. Alecto batted the weapon sideways instantly and grabbed the Matron by the collar.

“ _You tell me Flora’s condition right now_.”

“You wouldn’t prefer to see for yourself?” sneered Madam Pomfrey even though she was at a disadvantage. “You brought the Lestranges here to crowd my ward even more. You should be ashamed of your niece’s state, of _every_ filled bed in here. Or isn’t that why you won’t come in? You’re ashamed.”

Alecto trembled so speechless with rage that she could scarcely muster a curse. Enough stuttering, though, produced the Cruciatus. Madam Pomfrey screamed, but the curse did not last long since she was the only witch in the building who could treat Flora. She squatted down and picked her wand back up but did not aim it at Alecto again. Past the two witches, Astoria could see Hestia at Flora’s bedside at the end of the wing. It didn’t look good.

“So help me, Poppy…” Alecto pushed through her teeth, “if… if you make one — _one_ — wrong move on my Flora… I will drown you in the washbasin.”

Madam Pomfrey doubled over in tears after another curse. Alecto slammed the door shut on the Healer and wrenched Astoria’s arm so roughly that she had no choice but to turn and follow her lest it dislocate.

“You… you attracted Rabastan Lestrange to Flora.”

“I’d sooner die,” Astoria spat.

“ _You sooner might_.”

She wrangled Astoria all along the castle corridors. Astoria wasn’t playing along this time and tried to wrestle free, but the only thing that accomplished was getting a puppetry curse set into her arms and legs. They missed the turn for the Muggle Studies office.

Astoria’s guess as to where they were going ended up being worse than the reality, at least. She found herself being thrown into one of the chairs in Amycus’s office. He should have been holding a class right now, but the classroom had been empty when they walked in. Alecto looked at the clock. Astoria looked at Alecto.

“ _Invisibilia incantata_ ,” said Alecto, and Astoria sat in the chill of the charm.

She didn’t know why she had been Disillusioned and tried not to think about it too hard. Still, she kept imagining that Voldemort was going to walk into a Carrow-hosted surprise party where she was supposed to be the surprise. Death or Azkaban? Death or Azkaban? Astoria looked down to where her lap and feet would be and felt dizzy not being able to see herself there. Alecto looked at the clock. She sat down, played with her hair, and looked at the clock. She stood up and paced. Tugged her sleeves. Looked at the clock. Astoria had nothing better to look at than Alecto. She already knew not to speak. But when Amycus came in, her stomach made noises.

“You’re late,” said Alecto.

“I am?” her brother asked.

“By eight minutes anyhow. For Thursdays anyhow. Where were you? Where was your class? Didja take them out to the forest?” Alecto grilled.

“No, no, sorry. Didn’t realise the time. That Macmillan punk barged in and tried to act the brave knight for one of the fifth-year Gryffindors when he heard her screaming. I dismissed the rest of them and went after Macmillan. He’s been doubly Cruciated in the fifth-year’s place,” Amycus said enthusiastically.

He walked so close to Astoria that she feared being sat upon, but she still could not move.

“You don’t gotta be sorry. I just thought you got lost again, knowing you,” Alecto sighed.

“That was one time—”

“—Two,” she cut in.

“—Two times,” he laughed. “And maybe some times you don’t know about.”

“I was gettin’ ready to go out and shake your food bowl, leave my coat on the floor in the corridor for you to sniff out,” joked Alecto.

“Watch it,” smiled Amycus.

Alecto crossed her legs and bounced her foot to the tune of the song in her head.

It was one of Pariah’s songs.

Astoria shut her eyes to try to stop the melody.

Something slammed, and her eyes opened again. It wasn’t anyone who’d managed to get the door open to rescue her. It was just the bottom cupboard in Amycus’s desk. He reached in and set out two rocks glasses and a bottle of off-brand Firewhiskey. Astoria could hardly anticipate what the pair’s intoxicated state would look like. They were already unbearable sober.

“Oh. Firewhiskey?” Alecto critiqued as Amycus conjured ice cubes.

“I ain’t givin’ you no green fairy at this hour with hardly any food in your stomach.”

“Psh! What are you, my mother? I can hold my alcohol, smartarse.”

“Now, since when am _I_ the responsible one?” Amycus asked.

“Since you got old on me.”

“Watch it.”

As he poured the drinks, the stench of cheap burps filled the office. After toasting her brother, Alecto just barely raised her glass at Astoria and smiled her mouth into the nastiest little shape.

“So how was your day?” Alecto asked.

“Oh, y’know. Nicer without Bellatrix,” came Amycus’s satisfied answer as he leaned his rump onto his desk.

“Bellatrix? She wasn’t the problem.”

“She’s been _my_ problem, ain’t she? Always hated the bitch.”

“Amycus.”

His calm sipping became more akin to gargling.

“What? She ain’t here to hear me. I’ll say what I like. ’Course I can see how offended you are, seein’ as you’re so downright fond of her.”

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake, Am…”

Astoria didn’t know which was the worse breed of torture: actual curses or listening to the Carrows squabble. She was somewhat reminded of the times she had nagged Daphne for fancying Blaise Zabini. But really, Amycus’s problem wasn’t that it was Bellatrix specifically. It was that it was anybody — any threat to take Alecto away. Astoria knew them well enough to picture the situation switched: Alecto would curl in a ball sobbing if Amycus started spending his time elsewhere. The Carrows could not do anything independently. Their upbringing had never given them a chance to know how, nor did they want to learn. It was bizarre, assuredly, but it was also quite sad.

“For what it’s worth,” said Amycus tartly, “Bellatrix musta shagged somebody whose name ain’t Rodolphus, say, about eight months ago. So you might as well give it up. She’s got more transfiguration on her than a selkie in heat.”

“You ain’t serious… Don’t say such things,” mumbled Alecto.

“Disappointing news to you, I’m sure,” said Amycus. “Disgusting, she is. Just disgusting. Never liked her and I’m glad she’s gone.”

“Y’know, she’s probably worried how Azkaban made her look and transfigured herself to look healthier.”

“No. It’s new magic,” challenged Amycus, smacking a palm down onto the desk.

“It ain’t new magic! It’s since Azkaban, I’m tellin’ you,” Alecto answered, gripping her knee.

“Azkaban, eh? Who kept you out of Azkaban, Alecto? Wasn’t _Bella_. If it was up to her, you’da been cell mates — _dementor food_.”

“Oh yeah? Who kept _you_ out of Azkaban?”

“ _The woman in front of me_ — who the fuck else‽” he exclaimed.

The tinkling of ice in their glasses sounded like tiny windchimes. Astoria feared to breathe too loudly. The Carrows stewed at each other for a lengthy moment before finding common ground.

“Well, I’m right glad Bellatrix took Rabastan with her,” sighed Alecto.

“I’ll say. Any news on Flora?” Amycus asked, refilling their drinks.

“She’s still in the curse.”

“That filthy wanker. I oughtta kill him, I ought.”

“Don’t endanger yourself. I got the next best thing…” Alecto said, suddenly revealing her surprise. “…The honey that brought the fly.”

Astoria’s out-of-body experience left her in place of the fright of being visible. Astoria and Amycus violently startled at the same time, and half his drink splashed onto Alecto’s dress. He cleaned Alecto up but couldn’t save the wasted alcohol. His face let Astoria know it.

“Well, _well_! Didn’t know we had ourselves company… I been hearing things about this one all day…” Amycus said with piqued interest, circling round Astoria’s chair. “Why should our Flora have to pay for your crimes, Greengrass?”

“She shouldn’t,” said Astoria strongly. “And I shouldn’t have to pay for Rabastan’s. You’re the one who told him I was a Legilimens.”

Amycus shook his head and growled, “Always piss and vinegar with you, eh?”

He circled back to his desk and dipped his hand beneath the stack of underclassmen’s quizzes in his “to do” tray. He flipped through a couple, tossed the whole stack into the air, and splattered red zeros on them all with a wave of his wand before they floated gently into the “done” tray. Beaming at Alecto, he uncuffed his sleeves and rolled them up. Freed, the skull in his Dark Mark gnashed its teeth at Astoria.

“Know what I think, Alliecat?”

“Tell me anyway.”

“…I think me and you are gonna enjoy the evening off.”

~

Astoria watched the photograph on Amycus’s desk as she lay belly to the floor. Its image rolled for ten seconds. More expensive developing potions could retain up to one minute of photo exposure, but this was all the Carrows had had.

 _Ten, nine_.

Its sky was always partly sunny, and the way everyone’s shadows were, it must have been taken at four in the afternoon. Looped in time, its yellow flowers, though picked, never wilted.

 _Eight, seven_.

A gust of wind blew the fluff of more mature dandelions across the picture at six seconds. They settled into the grass, a collection of wishes that never came true.

 _Six, five_.

Astoria’s repeated mental countdowns never adequately distracted her from the pain,

 _Four_.

but she’d seen the photo’s sequence so many times,

 _Three_.

that she had become a mystagogue on the subject.

 _Two_.

She pondered why the world had given her as good an uncle as Faunus Greengrass only to take him away, and why it had given Flora and Hestia an uncle like Amycus Carrow only to keep him. Amycus would never be an Uncle Faunus — not in a million years — but he hadn’t always been _this_ , either. There was photographic evidence right in front of her. If Astoria had the power to twist fate and restart him from scratch, she knew that Flora and Hestia would have a real family. Amycus was evil, but he wasn’t born evil. He had just been told that he was. He accepted that explanation gratefully; it meant he didn’t have to do anything.

Sometimes, his Cruciatus Curse was less for pain and more for effect. Ornamental. Bored, even. Astoria’s best-case scenario was when he would get chatty with Alecto whilst casting curses. When they talked, Astoria’s pain would halve. And when Alecto laughed, the pain would quarter. Astoria would pretend it didn’t. She didn’t want him to know that she had his same relief. He’d double down if he knew.

The pressure of Amycus’s Cruciatus Curse left Astoria sore and aching, but the ordeal wasn’t finished. This was but one instance of Astoria’s continued punishment for blaspheming Voldemort and “gettin’ Flora cursed,” and no one close to her could intervene on her behalf without being a considered another traitor. That was why, all this time, she kept these detentions with the Carrows absolutely secret from Professor Sinistra. Alecto’s new cashmere skirt brushed against Astoria’s cheek as she stepped over her.

Amycus reclined in his chair off to the side, swirling the absinthe in his glass, enjoying the show. He kept his sister’s food warm whilst he chewed his own dinner with his mouth open. The Carrows enjoyed making a cabaret of the whole ordeal, and it was Alecto’s turn now. One would dine and watch whilst the other would perform. Amycus’s preferred methods involved brassy curses, whilst Alecto was more partial to skin-to-skin contact. In either case, Astoria ended up both injured and hungry. Flora had only just recovered from Rabastan’s Nightmare Curse earlier that week, and Astoria didn’t need anyone endangering themselves by getting involved with this. She dealt with it alone.

Alecto magically ripped the pure-blood identification band from Astoria’s skin, drawing blood. Astoria looked away so as not to get queasier than she was already. She had been waiting for Alecto to do it ever since she had torn them off all identifiable Dumbledore’s Army members.

 _God it hurts_.

“We tried to offer you preferential treatment, my little songbird, but you gone and disappointed us. After all you and me have been through, you still swear by your old ways. I really thought I’d taught you better. You seemed to _understand_ Muggle Studies. What made you change your mind? Was it that dream Rabastan gave you?”

Astoria bit the collar of her robes as Alecto sat all of her weight on her back and pulled her hair. As a pastime, Alecto started plaiting it messily with her stubby fingers, rolling Astoria’s face against the floor as she did so.

“You know Flora and Hestia so well, Astoria. Better than me and Am do, I sometimes fear. I’m scared we’ll lose them to you, really. See, we’re theirs, but they aren’t ours. We do everything for them, but they don’t accept us. Never did. I don’t get it. They wouldn’t’ve been born if it wasn’t for us… right? If their dad didn’t hate us enough to run off, he never would’ve met their mother… right? And, see, they’d’ve never been born! They were brought into this world because of us! See, see — you’ll make a real hole in our life if you take them from us, Astoria… You can’t, you just can’t…”

Alecto leaned all the way down to Astoria’s level, crushing her back more and appearing over her shoulders. When they made eye-contact, Astoria dry-heaved. Alecto was always so evocative a presence it was unbearable. She played human emotions like a harpist with bleeding fingers. Astoria would have to wash her robes of Alecto’s smell.

“I do value our time together in the evenings. Shame you’d rather be with Malfoy right now. Don’t think we don’t know. He didn’t really leave you after them terrible things you said about the Dark Lord, did he? Yeah, yeah… you two try and hide it, don’t you? Goodness, how careful you are,” Alecto said with a venom-barbed tongue.

Indeed, Draco and Astoria had done such a fine job of pretending to have split up that it was sadly starting to feel like they had. Astoria seethed at the taunt. Alecto was torturing Astoria for badmouthing Voldemort, yet she wasn’t doing anything to stop the rumour about her precious Dark Lord. In the scope of things, not many students believed Astoria was involved with Voldemort, but those who did had been a very strange force to reckon with. Astoria spent her time deliberately trying to act like a blood-traitor. It hadn’t put her in Azkaban yet — Rabastan evidently was trying to cover the whole thing up.

Alecto cast her umpteenth Scouring Charm against Astoria’s skin, and hissed when Astoria had made only a slight shift of her weight due to discomfort.

“ _Why are you in such a bloody hurry to leave us_?”

“Well, this isn’t _my_ idea of family fun night. And seeing as I have such sexy plans with Tom Riddle—” Astoria spewed, the first vitriol she had used all week.

Alecto pulled Astoria upwards, stretching her back and instilling a deep cramp.

“HOW DARE—”

“Yeah, I dare! That big pet snake he carries? _Compensation_ ,” Astoria fired.

Alecto screeched like a demon doused with salt, and Amycus set his plate down, figuring he would get involved. They both cast the Cruciatus Curse and wondered why Astoria wasn’t “learning” anything. Something changed in the way Alecto looked at Astoria. It was hard to imagine _how_ things could get any worse, but the most disturbing part was that Astoria did not yet know.

_Ten, nine._

_Eight, seven_ …

Astoria was not the only student for whom things grew worse each day. Even though the Lestranges’ visit had been cut short, their influence lingered. Detentions, which had always been arbitrarily torturous, were now intense Cruciatus sessions. Most Prefects, especially Tracey Davis, were sick of being bossed around by the Carrows, who were telling her all the new actions that qualified as rule-breaking. Another unwholesome development was the changing landscape of the library. No doubt the Lestranges had ordered all the books by known Muggle-borns to be burned. Seeing as Madam Pince would _never_ burn a book, she had figured out various ways to sneak them back home, but there was nothing she could do to stop the shipments of books on blood purity from coming in. It gave Alecto more material to make Muggle Studies lessons from, which had finally erupted to full-blown eugenics and calls for violence. Astoria was deeply ashamed for ever having paid an ounce of attention in that class, but overcoming the experience had at least given her a lesson.

Astoria yearned for Draco’s company, but with the other Death Eaters’ increased monitoring of his actions, there was no time she could spend with him except right before his patrols. She sent her Patronus out every night for his safety. Draco had to lie to the other Death Eaters and say she was doing it as an effort to get his attention. That he didn’t want anything to do with her.

It was all pretence, but Pansy Parkinson was strongly encouraged by the whole ordeal. Now that the allure of Rabastan wasn’t _as_ strong (it was not gone entirely), Parkinson fawned over Draco and followed him round. Draco told her to get lost on more than one occasion according to various gossiping reports. Astoria hated relying on others’ accounts for what Draco’s daily life was like. They weren’t even Astronomy partners anymore. She and Tracey had paired once again, whilst Draco and Theodore sat in a far corner during classes. Astoria wished Draco were a Legilimens, as they might have been able to communicate by looking at one another. Well, those Legilimency wavelengths were pretty obvious, anyway, weren’t they…? She guessed it was a lost cause.

Sometimes, Draco would send her self-destructing letters written in invisible ink. Sometimes, she wasn’t quick enough to read them before they burnt themselves to ash, which made her ache even more. He always said he loved her, and that they would get through this. Astoria loved him deeply. She just didn’t believe the second part was possible. The war raged on.

Although it was no longer Flora the sole student casting curses in Amycus’s class, many times the students were forced to cast the Cruciatus. Astoria wished there was some way to build up tolerance to the pain, but there wasn’t. Not with that curse. Her best opponent was Curtis Evercreech, whose rendition was hardly a painful shove, but the worst was Imogen Stretton. Besides the Cruciatus, the other magic Amycus introduced got progressively worse. Astoria copied every curse they used into her grimoire and drank it all in. She had desecrated her book on the zodiac all the way up to Serpentarius. Her last entry was Fiendfyre, which had taken far more information than what Amycus provided to truly understand, but she had always been willing to pursue independent study.

Astoria became less and less independent, though, since her roommates always tried to keep close. It was the right thing to do and the safe thing to do, but as they became more guarded of Astoria due to her unexplained absences, the Carrows devised a way to keep her part of their torture sessions. The Carrows met her increasing absence with the threat: if she did _not_ squeeze them into her schedule, they would go after her friends. Draco, Theodore, Tracey, Alexa, Chesna Borgin and Sedecla Burke, _their own nieces_ … they would all be Cruciated. Therefore, when Astoria was ordered to meet Alecto in the Clock Tower courtyard during the Hogsmeade trip on the twentieth of March, she did. On her way there, she was taunted with thoughts of her other options. Other things she could have done. Ways she could have got out of this. Ways she still could. But her feet carried her back to Alecto. Compared to the feasible options, it seemed… less effort.

The Clock Tower courtyard was heavily laden with the face-prickling smell of the last winter rain. Alecto was sitting at the edge of the empty fountain, swaddled warmly in a lavish new cloak, but her tattered leather shoes tapped on the cold stone. She appeared deep in thought, her eyes glazing over the pear tree that Hestia had taken upon herself to thin and tend to many times. The tree was empty; it was much too cold for pears yet.

“Today is your equinox, Astoria. Today is the first day of spring.”

Astoria made no response.

“I’ve a Hot-Air Charm ready for us here. Come sit.”

There was no safe distance at which to join Alecto. Astoria sat aside the dry fountain in the heat of Alecto’s magic, but the shivers didn’t go away.

“Tell me about your vernal festival, Astoria.”

“There’s not much to say. My family’s all gone.”

“That they are. But they weren’t always missing. They were a big part of society. So was the Vernal Equinox. You know, Astoria…” Alecto sighed, “why not just call it what it is? You celebrate Ostara. Or is that too Pagan a term for you folk?”

“It makes no difference,” said Astoria.

“It once did,” growled Alecto, her gloves pilling against the coarse stone she rubbed. “When I was a little girl, I always dreamt of going to your Equinox ball. I didn’t know we were excluded from the invitations back then. Grandmother held Ostara at her house for everyone you Greengrasses wouldn’t invite to the Equinox. But I spent more time wishing we was at your Equinox than appreciating what Grandmother tried to give us. I didn’t understand things like social class. I didn’t even know what a blood-traitor was back then. This Equinox feast, though… it seems like a _very_ pure-blood thing to me. Why does _everyone_ in your family wed on the same day?”

Astoria squinted with nonsense paranoia at the roots on the empty pear tree as she answered, “To honour the Earth.”

“Now that’s bollocks and you know it,” Alecto said, and Astoria felt a twinge in her legs as the magic that was warming her seat became too hot. “There’s a difference between tradition and ritual, Astoria. When a tradition isn’t, or _can_ ’ _t_ , be broken, that’s a ritual, see. And rituals, they’re used to break curses.”

Astoria watched Alecto’s interest indifferently. Quennell had made Astoria a Secret Keeper about the Greengrasses’ blood curse. No amount of Cruciatus Curses would satiate Alecto’s curiosity if Astoria could hold out. Alecto caught on to Astoria’s attitude of inconsequence, though.

“There’s some curses you can’t break. You familiar with any?”

“Off the top of my head, no, but I’m sure they’re out there,” Astoria said, looking not at Alecto but at a serpent-haired gargoyle peeking between the pear tree’s branches.

“‘Out there?’ There’s whole sets,” snorted Alecto.

Astoria’s shoulders hitched.

“I take it our change of venue is so you can cast something unbreakable upon me.”

“I’d like to, love,” Alecto murmured. “But truly unbreakable curses can only be cast upon yourself.”

They both watched the clouds. Alecto saw a pomegranate, a sea monster, and a water jug. Astoria only saw clouds.

“Have a look in the fountain, Astoria.”

Astoria redirected her gaze from the sky to the stone. There was no immediate horror waiting for her in the basin like she expected.

“What do you see?”

“Er, carved initials,” answered Astoria.

“Who of?” asked Alecto.

“Erm, students.”

“What kind of students?”

“Erm. Couples.”

“Couples, yes, yes! Name me some.”

“Er. ‘LM + NB.’ Er, ‘LE + JP’…” read Astoria.

“I lit one up for you, Astoria. Do you see it?”

“Er, yeah.”

“What’s it read?”

“‘HC + RC.’”

“That’s right! I found this two days ago and couldn’t stop thinking of it. Because we know an ‘HC’ don’t we?” Alecto prodded. “My niece Hestia.”

“Oh,” said Astoria with qualified tonelessness.

“We know an ‘RC,’ too, don’t we? The Mudblood. Rhiannon Clarke.”

“Oh,” shrugged Astoria. “No, I think this was Henry Combswaithe and Regina Colantoni, to be honest. A Ravenclaw couple from a few years back.”

Alecto smiled, “How very convenient.”

“It wasn’t too convenient when Filch caught them,” Astoria smiled back.

“Astoria,” Alecto snarled, “did Hestia touch that Mudblood?”

“Not in the way you seem to be fixated on, no,” retorted Astoria, and she earned herself a slap across the face.

Alecto could hardly wait for a second hit, “Did she or did she not touch the Mudblood? _Do not lie to me_.”

“Rhiannon was mine, Alecto,” Astoria lied seamlessly. “Rhiannon was mine until she got angry that I was friends with Draco. We split up. But she never ‘contaminated’ that niece you abuse.”

Alecto opened her mouth, shut it, and opened it again.

“Hestia turned out all wrong because of you, Astoria, not me. Now get out of my fucking sight.”

“With pleasure.”

Astoria walked away from the courtyard mostly backwards, fearing the onslaught of curses. But Alecto had busied herself with filling the fountain with water now that winter was over.

There wasn’t much else for Astoria to do that evening, ironically. She had joined Dumbledore’s Army, _not_ in formal allegiance, but rather in lack of privileges. She was forbidden from Hogsmeade trips, which were the only sliver of hope anyone had anymore. These trip days were the only times the dementors weren’t round the doors, and even though anyone who exited the castle was subjected to interrogations about Harry Potter when coming back in, Astoria opted to sit outside again. The Carrows couldn’t stop her from sitting on the stoop of the castle, or at least, they hadn’t bothered to yet. Hestia and Flora brought Astoria back a huge bag of sugared violets, and quietly admitted that they were a gift from Draco. Astoria thanked them for bringing them to her, and stayed outside after they went back in, just to try to feel something in nature. Her toes would have frozen long ago if not for the Hot-Air Charm. She loosened her scarf only a smidge, though, since she was prone to being cold. She watched students’ heads mill about the places that were still open in Hogsmeade from her high spot on the castle steps.

Supposedly, if she stepped too far out of the castle, some magical bell would go off in Alecto’s office and she would earn another Cruciatus Curse. Astoria didn’t know how that trick worked, or if it was even true, but if the Ministry had an entire Trace system for minors, she guessed Alecto could figure out a single bell.

In half-hearted protest, Astoria chucked small stones that she conjured as far as she could across the property. The farthest one landed about one dozen yards away from the Quidditch pitch. She wished Ginny Weasley would come to sit and sulk with her, but Ginny had got over the disappointment of not having Hogsmeade trips long ago. She was probably busy doing something stupidly risky in the castle in that moment.

A flock of blackbirds flew out of the pines. Astoria watched them go higher over the treeline. Evening was arriving, and Astoria recalled that the equinox would occur close to eight o’clock that night. The first day of spring was almost always cold, especially in northern Scotland. She thought of Quennell and her family’s curse yet again. So much had happened since Renshaw and Gracie’s wedding last year, and she could only hope that her family was finding some comfort in their vernal celebration.

Another flock of birds zipped over the grounds, except this group scattered from the flight formation. Astoria suspected some immature third-years had shot spells at them from Hogsmeade, and she stood up to get a better look at the village. It was hard to see, but some students looked to be running.

Every place Astoria could see, people were coming out of their houses, and then an even larger group walked back _toward_ the place the students had run _from_. Astoria hopped up onto the ledge. She saw an odd black figure against the setting sun, but then it vanished into thin air. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good, so Astoria ran for the door. She reached the landing at the top of the steps when she heard a loud crack reverberate against the castle’s stone. Dark magic fell upon her whole body.

Only feet away from the door, Astoria froze in place and fell. Her skin scraped the abrasive stone, and had her scarf not bunched upwards, she would have broken her nose during the fall. She knew who was behind her and realised how many fears were worse than the fear of death. Rabastan Lestrange cast a Disillusionment Charm on her by way of cutting into her cloak with the whip. He, too, was invisible, and groped all through her pockets without being able to see. When he finally found her wand, he threw it down the steps. He smacked her with two Sticking Charms, one on her lower body, and one on her cheek. Then he magicked her on the back of an invisible broom and sat his weight on the front, backing into her face so that she was Stuck to him. He left a group of flaming red Howlers at the castle door before lifting off. Astoria’s aversion to heights paled in comparison to her aversion to Rabastan, whose shoulder blades rolled against her cheek. He smelled like Draco, and at first Astoria chalked it up to his residence at Malfoy Manor, but that was not it. He smelled _exactly_ like Draco, and she also caught hints of chocolate, and finally, night air, which was not a scent that could be captured. Rabastan was wearing Amortentia as _cologne_. Unbelievable.

“Wanna go on the Hogsmeade trip with me, Astoria?” Rabastan slurped, and he flew through the now-crowded streets, knocking people over with invisible force.

Astoria was desperate for help, but she couldn’t utter anything, and she was absolutely unable to move. There was nothing she could drop to say, “this is the direction he took me.”

As he circled round and round Professor Sinistra’s house, Astoria begged someone to react to the noise he was making and cast something in that direction, even if it hit her, too. Just to get her off of this broom. Anything. But everyone was circled round the body of the former Minister for Magic, gawking at his form on Professor Sinistra’s doorstep. There was something wrong with the carcass’s face.

“ _Aaaaaand_ if you look to your left, you’ll find Corpse-nelius Fudge in his not-so-natural habitat,” Rabastan laughed.

Professor Sinistra was not home to see it. She would have been keen enough to save Astoria, but she was in the castle, probably getting stalked by Howlers. Was there any hope at all?

“Disaster always attracts a useless sort of crowd, doesn’t it?” Rabastan remarked of the people below them.

He hovered outside the professor’s window, which he could not enter without getting cursed to death. He then lifted further into the air.

“Oh, I hope Aurora likes her gift!” he shouted as the wind stung Astoria and threw her robes side to side. “You see, Green-bean, Cornelius Fudge consistently ignored my pleas for parole. And since Aurora hates him so much, I went ahead and did us both the favour! It was _lots_ more fun than offing that Mudblood family earlier this week! Oh, but I don’t think I’ll get my picture in the paper. That’s the only sad thing about us controlling the media. They are too scared to say anything about us. Hm, well, maybe if I pay a visit to the _Prophet_ …”

Astoria suddenly hoped that Alecto had not made empty threats about the alerts she would get if Astoria left Hogwarts property. Even if it was _Alecto_ who went looking, having anybody search for her was better than being some unsolved case at the hands of Rabastan.

They travelled at top speed. The only thing Astoria still had control of was her eyes. She wanted to shut them against the wind, but if she did, she wouldn’t have any clues about where she was being taken. She couldn’t decide on whether she wanted to be taken to Malfoy Manor or not. If she was, she’d be thrown into the basement prison with Luna Lovegood, but she would also be under the same roof as Voldemort.

If she was going somewhere else, though, no one would ever find her body.

It was overcast, and Astoria could not determine either time or location based on the stars. Her terror hindered her own sense of an internal clock, and she had no idea how long they had been flying. She pondered Rabastan’s choice of travel; he could have Apparated at the edge of the Hogwarts property rather than bother with a broom. With her cheek magically adhered to his back, though, she could hear his ugly heartbeat. He had missed _flying_ whilst in prison, not Apparating.

Astoria was not fond of either method of travel. She was motion-sick by the time they landed in a not-so-affluent Muggle town that had several decrepit storefronts. Its atmosphere was akin to Diagon Alley’s recent dilapidation. Rabastan approached a rotted art deco building and punched out a stained glass window with his wand whilst still on the broom. He detached Astoria and sent her drifting through the damaged window. Her cloak snagged on the broken glass, and she fell to a dusty floor. She could not open her mouth to cough out the dust, which created a miserable trap of her air. The building was heavily permeated with mildew and mould. Rabastan’s steps made creaks in the floor and footprints in the blanket of dust round her. He made himself visible once again, but Astoria could only see the toes of his boots. Another painful sting, and Astoria was herself visible again. She still could not speak or move, and Rabastan hoisted her into the air with a twirl of his wand.

“Every time I come back, they seem to have boarded up another window. I don’t understand why they don’t just demolish the place. Oh, yes, how could I forget? The walls are full of toxins! Yes, yes. Savage Muggles built it. This is old Manbaum’s Funeral Parlour. But it’s almost beautiful.”

Astoria couldn’t see anything except the falling ceiling, cracked like eggshells through several layers of paint.

 _Is this where you take people_?

Rabastan walked through an open, termite-eaten door and squeezed down a hallway full of rubbish and broken furniture. At the end of the hallway was a single flight of rickety steps. The smell was bad already, but it was suffocating downstairs. Rabastan threw Astoria on the wet, slimy floor and swung the whip all round, conjuring candles above them. She would have preferred not to see the room.

“They’d dress the bodies up really pretty down here. You have to do a lot of work to get a Muggle body to preserve. ‘Embalming,’ they call it,” Rabastan said.

In the light, Astoria saw his one-eared visage. He still had the same facial wounds that he wore at Hogwarts in January. The bruise over the left eye. The swollen cut over the right eyebrow. His suffering at the hands of Dark magic had not once caused him to stop using it. He appeared to be smiling, but it was just the peculiar curvature of his bottom lip. His expression was not a happy one yet.

He looked at his gold watch carefully and sighed, “What do you think, Astoria? Do you think Aurora will pay us a visit? I hope I made the directions clear enough. You’re in real trouble if nobody understands where you are. Well, we still have an hour. It would be such a shame to waste it, hm?”

That awful whip hit Astoria across the chest, and she started floating again, only to be set on a cold dust-covered surface. She felt the curse holding her loosen round her face and neck. Rabastan walked up to her head and flung one side of his long coat back, grabbing one of the many Muggle devices he carried for people who had met the same or worse fates. He picked something that looked like salad tongs or crab claws.

“You are _so_ fidgety! These are only eye specula, stupid! Here, let me show you.”

With his sweaty gloves, Rabastan stretched her eyelids back and placed the cold metal instrument right at their corner so that she couldn’t blink. Her body screamed where her voice could not.

“Oh, my, you look so clownish. I use these all the time for Legilimency. I highly recommend them. See, it’s not so bad! I believe what you’re afraid of is _these_ …”

Rabastan detached two more instruments from his belt and waved them in front of her itchy, drying eyes. They looked even more hideous. One looked like a wire, and the other, she didn’t want to know.

“This is called a ‘lachrymal probe.’ This one’s an ‘evisceration scoop.’ I do love Muggle eye instruments! The eyes are one of the most fascinating parts of the body. You’re a Legilimens just like me, Astoria — you must agree.”

Rabastan hovered his face over hers and stared into her eyes.

“ _Peek-a-boo_ , pigeon.”

His pupils dilated abruptly. She could not stop it. She kept thinking she would end up looking like Quennell.

“Quennell, now let’s see… that must be Quennell Park’s namesake. Oh, he’s a ghost? No? Not a ghost? He was… your first love? You must be mad to fall in love with a ghost. Unless… Oh, Astoria, you are so confusing to comb. There’s something wrong with your brain.”

 _What_?

Rabastan whacked her forehead.

“Hm, Quennell’s got no eyes? You’re about to get yours scooped out your head if you don’t get more conversational here, sweet cheeks.”

Astoria shook against the instrument on her face. She would have been blaring her voice if she could. Rabastan squeezed her face, causing the specula to poke her in the eye, and for one painful but relieving moment, she could blink before he moved them back in place.

“Oh, you’re like a little treasure map!” Rabastan piped as he weaved his way through her memories and emotions. “I love treasure hunts. Ah, ah, ‘X’ marks the spot… there we go. Oh, _magnifique_! _Je savais que tu étais inestimable_. You’ve used Legilimency on my witch!”

Astoria could not believe the detail with which Rabastan drew out her memories. Her head became a well crumbling from the demand of a thousand thirsty buckets. Rabastan was only interested in that which was second-hand from Professor Sinistra and peeled it out like glue from fingernails. He started to shake as he cracked the shell of the images of Professor Sinistra’s house and toured its interior by way of Astoria’s memories. She saw the twigwork banisters, the lucky talismans, and the moving rooms fly past her. Rabastan spent ages trying to get into Professor Sinistra’s bedroom, but as Astoria had only seen it from the door, there was not much to be extracted. His anger rang against her each time he saw something that belonged to Crouch Jr, and when he, like Astoria, uncovered the man’s office, he lost his cool.

“Why would she keep Crouch’s rubbish that way?” he screamed.

Rabastan’s fumbled with his desecrated wand to try to torture Astoria with a spell, but it fell on her, so he decided to hold it against her neck instead. The pressure, though, loosened as Rabastan began to make a show of crying. He dropped jealous tears on her cheek as he uncovered the sanctity which Professor Sinistra held for her husband compared to the repulsive hatred she had for him. Astoria was pitiless to the theatrical show of emotion. She wasn’t naïve; she knew any scraps of empathy she’d have for Rabastan would allow him to scratch her skull deeper.

After he gulped down the entire vivid chronicle of Astoria’s relationship with the professor, he started sniffing round Astoria’s personal life as well. He began with her most immediate memories, which he found nothing less than hilarious. His tears vanished into a pitiless smile.

“Well… at least Flora made it, hm?” he giggled uncontrollably.

Astoria tried everything to move, because the first thing she would do if she could was punch his teeth out. After more of his horrible amusement, he uncovered the next layer down. As memories of that cursed mirror began to resurface, something chilled Astoria’s spine, and she felt pressure in her ears, like when Rhiannon used to set her amp too loud…

 _You fuckwit! The mirror wasn’t cursed!_ _AND YOU BROKE IT_! Rabastan screamed into her head without opening his mouth.

 _It_ was _cursed_! she thought back, but the second she did, her ears popped and the pressure left her. She fell into Rabastan’s eyes, which she decided were neither definitively blue nor hazel, but simply cold. She could feel all his nasty feelings and touch all of his thoughts.

Astoria could not believe that she had reached a wavelength with Rabastan Lestrange, and based on his struggle for breath, neither could he. She tried yet again to throw him from her head. It didn’t work — her own mind wouldn’t even listen to her will. What had done it? She didn’t even have a wand on her. Was it the strength of their present emotions? Shouldn’t she have been able to figure this technique out with Professor Sinistra? Had she been too afraid of doing it wrong in front of her? Why was it working now? Even though it was a great achievement, it felt discreditable since it was with Rabastan.

Rabastan was astonished and had not yet used his privilege of blinking. No, wait, he didn’t want to blink. He was afraid the wavelength would go away, because this had never worked for him before, either.

 _What_ … _did you just do_? his mind strummed.

 _I don’t know_ , she thought.

Rabastan lifted one of the hands that had, moments ago, been hurting her, and rested it upon her cheek. How like him.

 _How did you do what you’re doing_? he begged again.

 _I don’t know_. _I don’t care_. _Stop asking_ , she wished.

 _I need to know how_.

Rabastan suddenly removed the eye specula from Astoria’s face and started rubbing his own eyelids. She shut her dry eyes and tried to blink as many tears into them as she could. The wavelength, though, did not go away. He held her face again and brushed it as though trying to get insects off of her, but the Legilimency did not flutter away.

 _Why are you still in my mind_? Rabastan wondered in disbelief.

 _I DON’T KNOW_.

 _Then you’re trying to leave, right? Why do you keep trying to leave_?

 _I HATE YOU_.

 _Then why are you still in here_? his thoughts circled, and when they circled, so did hers. She was sweeping through his whole week, then his whole month, then the past few months, not as a prying detective, but as though she had _been_ him. She saw everything, even things he didn’t want her to see. In the spiral, he saw everything, too. She didn’t want him to see a single memory. Not a single one. And yet they couldn’t get out.

 _Aurora did this all the time with Barty Crouch_ , Rabastan thought, and his palm trembled against Astoria’s cheek. _This is what she does with Severus Snape_. _But what IS this_? _This isn’t what I was told it was_.

 _Hell if I know_! Astoria shot.

 _How do I do this with Aurora_? _How do I do this with Aurora_? _How do I do this with Aurora_?

 _Shut it_!

 _Quit taking my thoughts, then, you Mudblood-lover_! _You know I can’t stop them_!

 _I can’t stop it, either_!

They were in turmoil for an unknown amount of time. Eventually, the shock went away, and it became another state of presence. Rabastan then recalled the topic that had brought them to this point: the mirror he had used to trap Professor Sinistra.

 _What did_ you _divine from that mirror, Astoria_? he wondered, each saccade of his eye matching hers.

Rabastan saw Draco. He saw her family. He even saw the family she thought she might want someday. It was humiliating. And he saw Professor Sinistra, not with him, but with her husband. What she had seen in that mirror angered him; synchronously, what he had seen in the mirror sickened her.

_You know those images are fake, Rabastan. It’s not the future. I saw dead people in the mirror._

_You’ll be dead in the near enough future that you saw all your dearly departed_! he thought heartlessly.

 _Even if I’m dead, you can’t live your life based on something you saw through glass_.

Astoria reeled at the contact with Rabastan, but her mind was locked in conversation. Her opinions and feelings were instantly transmitted to him, and she couldn’t even dress them up the way she wanted. Then again, neither could he, and it was really showing.

 _Did I give you Stockholm Syndrome already_? _Ew, that’s gross_! _We’ve only just met_! _Take me to dinner first at least_! _I’m sure you’ll find a way to rationalise it the same way you justify having lover-boy Draco_!

 _You’re disgusting_ , she responded instantly.

 _I AM disgusting_! Rabastan thought proudly. _I know the goddamn mirror is fake. Do you think I’m stupid_? _All because I misspell things_? _I know how to work people. Why can’t I play the ‘boo-hoo I’m sick and sad’ game, huh? Barty did, and it worked wonders on Aurora. Acted like a fucking lost puppy with her. ‘Boo-hoo, Daddy doesn’t love me!’_

_Barty Crouch was a different kind of sick than you, Rabastan._

She wished she would have kept that thought quiet. Every feeling, however, reached Rabastan the moment it birthed.

_Oh, aren’t we high and mighty, Astoria? Haven’t you noticed that you do the same things I do?_

He grabbed the hand she had marked with a sigil of Dark magic and traced his fingers in circles along the scar pattern in her palm, deriding her as he did so.

_The ends justify the means for you, too. That’s why you use Dark magic. You’ve always got your face in your grimoire these days. You’re the type of person to think you’re always right. I love it. You convince yourself that you’re right no matter what evil you’re doing._

Astoria tried again to detach from the connection, but something held them knotted.

_Why are you so worked up about it, Astoria? You know I’m right. Take Pansy Parkinson for example. You don’t care about her. You just wanted to feel like you did the right thing. It’s all about how you feel! Not how she feels at all! You thought, ‘oh no, Pansy’s soooo gross for wanting Rabastan, and she’ll put herself in danger. I’m an upstanding citizen, and I have to get her out of harm’s way! There’s no lust for Rabastan in me — nope, no sir, I’m a God-fearing Greengrass girl!’_

He drew her hand to his heart. The beat was off.

 _What’s so wrong with me, then, Astoria? I might be scratched up, but I’m damn good-looking. You think I’m too dirty for you? Well, I can see everything now, can’t I_ …? _You’re pretty dirty yourself. And yet you think I go against nature. Ha! Look at nature, and try to tell me I go against nature. Oh, you are so self-righteous, Astoria Greengrass. Come on, convince me, too. Convince me you’re right. You’ll have so much fun. I’m such a good fucking listener, you know._

 _I don’t know what the hell happened to you as a child to make you this way_ , Astoria seethed, but her raw earnestness made him press the wand tighter across her neck.

 _My childhood was bang all right, but if I told you it wasn’t, would you make excuses for me the way you do for yourself_? he thought with a smile. _Or for the Carrows_? _For Draco_?

 _Stop_.

 _I don’t think you want me to stop. You love the way I smell_. _You love exploring my mind_. I’m _something_ new _, aren’t I_?

 _You arsehole_! she thought again, having resorted to trying to wrench against the binding curse that held her to the embalming table.

_If I was that much of an arsehole, we wouldn’t still have this wavelength going, now, would we? Or maybe you’re just as much an arsehole as me!_

Astoria’s headache throbbed. There was no comparison to be drawn between her and Rabastan, surely… This wavelength didn’t mean anything. Two Legilimens made eye contact, that was all. They were not the same.

 _Well, like you, I think my people are doing this wrong_ , Rabastan interjected. _Of course, you and I have different ideas about_ why _it’s going wrong, but it_ is _going wrong. My people have done a fine job with the government, and the string-pulling, and the acquisition of power. Yet they aren’t swaying public opinion. Obviously, we haven’t swayed you. I can see it in your stupid, Mudwallowing head. We should be more insidious. The one who did it right before his dick got the better of him was old Grindelwald. He appealed to the people with what made sense. He didn’t claim that Mudbloods were stealing magic itself. A six-year-old can see through that approach! I know Mudbloods come from Squibs. Then the Muggles reject them, as they did with your Clarkey friend. It’d be better for Mudbloods if they weren’t born. It’s Squibs that are the root of the problem, injecting old magical blood into the cesspool._

Astoria realised exactly how dangerous a philosophy she had stumbled upon in Rabastan’s ranting head. If history had been different, and it was Rabastan running things instead of Voldemort, the Death Eaters might be even more certain to win. They would not only win against the resistance magically, but win over the “no-siders” by way of toxic rhetoric.

 _Well, thank you for the compliment, ma voyeuse, but I can’t suggest any of this. Rodolphus and Bellatrix_ worship _the Dark Lord. Don’t get me wrong — I worship him as well. I would do anything for him. But he is simply so far removed from the world that he’s not able to see past this one stupid boy named Potter. Society isn’t changing round us! It’s driving me mad. Nothing I’m doing is making society move in the right direction_. _Imagine what sort of world we could have if your priggish family championed the ‘free magic’ movement. See, if we call it ‘free magic,’ it already doesn’t sound as bad! Alecto had over half of you captivated before she started prattling off about the ‘stealing magic’ theory. Then the whole class derailed, didn’t it? She even had YOUR little nose in the air convinced — don’t pretend she didn’t! Oh, I could kill her for ruining her rapport. It was Rodolphus’s doing, making her change the way she taught. That filthy cuckold. He doesn’t know there are larger implications for every move we make._

Rabastan paused, and his thoughts agitated again as he held his eyes on hers. Nobody had ever listened to him before. He had never been able to put these ideas to speech, and that was fortunate for the Order’s side of the war, but not for him. This wavelength couldn’t truly be called listening, yet he would gladly, eagerly, even _urgently_ , take the imitation. But wasn’t he running out of time? Wasn’t he supposed to kill her, to show that he was true to his threats?

 _Do you find me intelligent_? he tried to Occlude, but it didn’t work, and Astoria heard that neediness. Memories of Rodolphus’s constant success only churned up more memories of all of Rabastan’s failures. Rodolphus was so far ahead in age of him that his success was determined by the time Rabastan had even been Sorted. The brothers had always been destined for the Dark Lord’s service, which is what they wanted, but Rabastan feared Rodolphus would outdo him in that aspect as well.

 _Do you find me intriguing_? his mind betrayed him again, because Astoria Greengrass presently held such powerful emotion for him — even if it was hatred — and such _indifference for Rodolphus_! This was the first time anyone had been intimidated by Rabastan’s intellect over his magic. Rabastan had been held back two years, couldn’t spell, couldn’t earn respect no matter what drastic measures he used.

 _Do you find me attractive, or is it just that I smell like Malfoy_? Over the years, Rabastan had entertained many a thought of transfiguring into the bespeckled and nervous appearance of the lover of his obsession, just so that she would throw some piece of herself to him. Even in this moment, with a witch he didn’t desire, any signs of her magnetism to him depended on his evocation of another wizard. Rodolphus was hefty and conventionally attractive unlike Rabastan, and he had been swarmed with the lust of witches ever since the stubble had first appeared on his chin. The only person who ever desired Rabastan in and of himself was Pansy Parkinson, and she was nothing, _nothing_! Her mind was critically uninteresting! Less a Legilimens and more a mesmerist, Astoria Greengrass was a dangerous concept. The longer he remained her captive, the longer it would take him to make good his threats to the witch who consumed him, Aurora Sinistra. Rabastan looked away from Astoria, but he was still incapable of detaching from their Legilimency wavelength. The connection deeply bothered him since it wasn’t on his terms. He continued to wonder what was wrong, for it wasn’t on Astoria’s terms, either. _So why had they adhered so well_? He looked at his watch.

 _Ten minutes_? _Really_? he thought.

 _Ten minutes what?_ Astoria pondered instinctively.

 _You have ten minutes for Aurora to find us before I kill you_. _I thought she would have by now. She’s a very good witch. Maybe she doesn’t love you as much as she hates me. Too bad for you, I guess._

Astoria’s misery and confusion made it very difficult to think of escape plans. Their psyches were still completely woven together, so anything she came up with, Rabastan would know instantly. He even knew that she was thinking about that exact predicament. She considered the irony of dying on the Equinox and wondered exactly how many before her had died on this same day due to their blood curse. Rabastan perked up and dove back on her face. He lifted his wand off of her neck, of mind to put it to use.

As far as Astoria could tell, they were no longer in the wavelength after that, but something worse was coming. Rabastan, sensing that the wavelength was gone, put the eye specula back to hold her eyelids, and her face felt like it would swell.

“I couldn’t catch that last bit you thought. I know what that blank spot in people’s heads means — you must be a Secret Keeper! Oh, Astoria, Secret Keepers are my absolute _favourite_!”

He took her hand again and cupped it over the ear-hole in the side of his head. It must have sounded like the ocean, the wind.

“I’m listening, Astoria. Let’s see how long you last before you give me your big bad secret.”


	23. Blood Magic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 23 - "Ni dieu ni maître" by Rome
> 
>   
> Double-posted for your reading displeasure :^)  
>  **CONTENT WARNINGS: sexual harassment of a minor, physical torture, more-than-canon-typical blood, injury to the eyes referenced**

No Cruciatus Curse that Astoria had ever received felt the way Rabastan’s did. He had dressed up the process with the rusty tools in his belt, and even though he was perfectly aware that Astoria would have given her family’s secret away to avoid any part of this, he kept her Silenced so he could taunt that she hadn’t told him yet. At long last, his curiosity about the Fidelius Charm overpowered his lust for torture. The first thing on her tongue when he lifted her out of silence was Quennell’s curse. There could be no loss telling Rabastan about it, not after what she’d been through, not after blinking the blood from her eyes.

Wrong.

Rabastan was completely fascinated with the Greengrass’s curse, and even more interested in the fact that this night _was_ the Vernal Equinox.

“Now how funny is that,” Rabastan said. “And here you are with me of all wizards.”

The taste of her own cursed blood trailed down across her lips. He wiped them with his thumb.

“Couldn’t I break your nasty curse for you, _ma voyeuse_?” he mocked.

Astoria grimaced.

“What’s that look for? Oh, you thought I was serious? _Tsk tsk_. Don’t _flatter_ yourself, now, my dear!” Rabastan cooed. “The disgust is mutual. But don’t fret. It won’t be your blood curse that kills you.”

He coiled his whip-wand like a snake in a basket, and within the motion there appeared a conjured glass jar. Rabastan shook the jar in front of her face threateningly. There were so many revolting things he could do in the school of blood magic.

“That Carrow thug told me you’re familiar with blood magic, too, Astoria. How well-read you are! You must know what I’m doing.”

Making her into an Inferius the manual way appeared to be his motive. He set her wand arm free but held it tight in his grip and stared at her reactions. He dived once more into her brain, lapping up her memories of how she had checked out the _Blood Magick_ book at the beginning of the school year. It made her feel like a horrible person again.

 _I only read the one curse_ , she thought. _I didn’t read about blood magic, really, I didn’t_ , _really_.

She was probably trying to tell God, whom she thought she would see shortly. It was not God who answered her, but Rabastan. He dug inquisitively at her experience with the book. Astoria wouldn’t have remembered the single, cacophonous incantation she’d come across had Rabastan not stirred it up so hungrily. She didn’t even know what that spell was called, only what it looked like.

Rabastan set the jar afloat right beneath her arm. Then his wand started wrapping over her outstretched arm like a python squeezing out life. He started muttering something iniquitous, and, like any time he spoke, she began to sear with pain. Her arm felt wet. He was going to take too much blood.

She would die.

The hour she had for someone to rescue her was up. Her need to survive led her to say aloud the very last thing he had pulled from her head. She knew there was enough blood running from her to use it…

“ _Ceargealdot steorran ríed_ , _unlybban spiwe blðdþigen_!” she screamed.

She could hardly believe it. Rabastan’s hand dropped from his wand, which was still tight round Astoria’s arm, and he fell to the floor, writhing like freshly killed centipede. Astoria at last gained the ability to move, and she rolled off the table and untwisted the wand from herself. It was very difficult to see with the injuries to her eyes, but what was clear was that the screaming Rabastan was not meant to be double-jointed. He was shaking, twisting, knotting, and thumping against the floor in positions the world’s best acrobats could not flex to. But Astoria was not safe yet. The dried blood on her face was painful, but more importantly, she had to stop her continual blood loss in the arm with a wand she didn’t know how to use. She ran upstairs, tripping on a broken stair. Unlike Rabastan’s well-lit torture chamber, the upstairs of the abandoned funeral parlour was clumsily dark and full of hazardous floorboards and clutter. She tried every position of the wand and whip she could think of, muttering all kinds of magic she wasn’t sure would work.

Her veins and arteries were showing black through her skin. Rabastan had made quite some progress in what little time he had worked blood magic on her. Astoria yanked down a dusty curtain, and she was able to cut it up with the wand. It was very difficult to make a tourniquet for oneself though, especially when no one had ever felt the need to teach it to her. Tourniquets were for Muggle first-aid, not well-behaved witches. Astoria spat at the dusty fabric held between her teeth. With the curtain tied as tightly as her physical strength would allow, she once again tried to stop the bleeding with the wand, this time folding the whip like an accordion to cast healing magic. Everything she had learnt through Crouch Jr’s class in her third year, books in her fourth year, Snape last year, and Dark magic this year was fair game in the fight against death. Then something _worked_. She had moved so quickly she didn’t know what it was, so she cast all the most recent things again. Her wounds were made from Dark magic, but _something worked_. She was not going to die from blood loss.

A distinctive crack of Apparition sounded in the basement along with Rabastan’s continual screams of anguish. Astoria could not afford to excite at the prospect of a rescuer. Anyone who would be able to Apparate directly to this location was on Rabastan’s side, not hers. A man’s voice started booming along with the screams… Counter-curses to save Rabastan? Not on Astoria’s watch. With the building so fallen in, the darkness, and her swelling wet eyes, it was hard to find a door to the exterior, but when she saw streetlights through a half-moon arch, she tossed a Bombardment Charm from the whip to get out. She ran into the street, and no matter how much she wanted to scream for help, she knew she could not. Drawing Muggles to the area would inevitably kill them. She turned back to the building and flung the whip over and over…

“ _CONFRINGO_ , _CONFRINGO_ , _CONFRINGO_ , _CONFRINGO_ , _CONFRINGO_!”

Explosions like she had never created before destroyed the building, each angrier and more powerful than the last, as the pain in Astoria’s arm reacted perfectly to the wand she now commanded. Pieces of the building were flying everywhere, rubble fell into hot flame, and dust billowed out between the white and orange, igniting into embers. The sound was incredible, the explosions were meaty fireworks. _He would die_! _Lestrange would die_!

A rumble came from the appalling mess of the structure, and before Astoria could even squint at what had happened, a huge hole appeared in the crumbling, flaming foundation, with more of the building falling into it.

 _Oh no_.

From the hole in the building’s carcass erupted a massive serpent, at least twenty feet thick in its gut’s diameter. In its seemingly invincible tread, the serpent carried a large, black sphere at the base of its head — the Nidhogg Shield. The same street lanterns that polluted the skies with bright, aimless light illuminated the shield along the gargantuan snake’s back. Rabastan was still limp, and his allies let him roll and slide aimlessly along the globe of the shield. The caster of the shield was none other than Rodolphus Lestrange, his wretched brother’s saviour, but the master of the beast was a pale witch with calf-length blonde hair. Working wandlessly, her arms were in a ritual dance controlling the creature’s ascent. She was held intimately by Rodolphus at the waist, but she was not Bellatrix in disguise. She was something new.

Astoria held the image of the countryside surrounding Hogwarts taut in her mind and turned into a frantic, compressing Apparition, hoping that two months’ teachings were enough to move her in one piece.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _sloppy red graffiti under a bridge reading 'punish the evil.'  
>  you wished you could agree, but as you mulled over your own wrongdoings, your knuckles went white.  
> you thought about things shameful enough to be left out of the confessional,  
> ugly enough to let rot in the deep caverns of your ribcage.  
> were you evil?  
> did you deserve to be punished?_  
> \- from [beware the black dog](https://bewaretheblackdog.tumblr.com/post/632798067368902656/things-from-my-road-trip-through-the-midwest-that)


	24. House Pride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"It seems to me at times my blood flows out in waves  
>  Like a fountain that gushes in rhythmical sobs.  
> I hear it clearly, escaping with long murmurs,  
> But I feel my body in vain to find the wound."_  
> \- "The Fountain of Blood," C. Baudelaire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 24 - "Which Witch?" by Florence + the Machine

It took as much concentration for Apparition as for a Patronus, but Astoria tumbled into the grassy valley outside the Hogwarts property. If she had been capable of this feat last summer, she might have left Theodore’s dad to fend for himself. At least Rabastan hadn’t bothered to pry about Nott Sr with his Legilimency, but was Rabastan right about who Astoria _was_ deep down?

Astoria saw the dim lights of the castle’s windows. She was in a predicament. The Hogwarts property was protected by Caterwauling Charms that would sound if anyone walked in from the outside. Though Astoria could use Dark magic to get past Caterwauling Charms on doors and windows, the one surrounding the entire property was impossible to stop. She needed in, though, as it would be her only protection. The Lestranges weren’t stupid, so they could easily guess that she had Apparated back to Hogwarts. Astoria had two things they wanted: Rabastan’s wand and her life.

After weighing her options and remembering that it was _not_ Draco’s patrol shift, Astoria ran forth into the Caterwaul. It made an unearthly scream, but at least for a few moments it would _only_ be a scream. Astoria rounded the approach as fast as she could and Blasted through the gates with surprising ease. However, she didn’t know how to properly crack a whip (why on Earth would she?), and it didn’t work with smaller spells. She needed water for her bloody face and itchy, bruised eyes, but the wand would not conjure it no matter how she twisted and twirled the leather end.

An unusual amount of commotion came from Professor Hagrid’s hut as Astoria zipped past it.

 _No way_.

There were students in there after curfew: Dumbledore’s Army! The lights and panicked noises from Hagrid’s hut were so obvious that the patrolling Death Eaters dove toward the hut rather than Astoria, who was but one small, dark figure in the grass. Astoria felt so guilty. Professor Hagrid and the students pouring out of the hut would have had a peaceful get-together if she had not set off the Caterwaul. Now they contended with curses from the responding Death Eaters, and even more figures were Apparating beyond the property line. Were they more Death Eaters, or Ministry officials? There wasn’t a distinction these days, was there?

Bright orange curses zoomed right over Astoria’s head. She had finally been targeted along with the rest of the scrambling students. Astoria cast a Shield round herself successfully by drawing the whip in a circle round her — it seemed like the natural thing to do. Though the wand was not _overly_ cooperative, her own wand had never been either, and she was used to being assertive in order to get any casting done. Despite the unwieldiness of the whip, the wand itself seemed to channel her magic well.

 _You do the same things I do,_ Rabastan had taunted her.

No — Astoria wasn’t like Rabastan. What an absurd remark. He had meant for those comments to bother her, or more likely, to make himself feel better.

A trio of Death Eaters caught interest in Neville Longbottom as he hurriedly aided younger students up towards the castle. All three foes raised their wands to his head, but Neville couldn’t see them from where he stood in the chaos. Astoria flailed that awful whip the way Rabastan did, except this was to save somebody… it was different. _She was different_ _than Rabastan_.

“ _DIFFINDO_!”

All three Death Eaters dropped their wands and grabbed their backs in terrible pain, blood coming out onto their white hands. They crumpled to the ground, allowing Neville to get the kids. Ministry people were meanwhile trying to take down Professor Hagrid, not unlike they had tried under Umbridge’s command. The professor had his dog over his back and looked to be jabbing an umbrella at them, causing shockwaves of magic that tore up the grass. More curses missed Astoria’s head. She wished she could maintain a Shield and cast substantial magic simultaneously, but she had to pick. Shield or sword, never both.

Louder than the noise of spells and voices came the footsteps of a giant, whose head was well over the forest’s trees. Apparently affiliated with Professor Hagrid, the giant jumbled the Death Eaters and Ministry thugs in a matter of moments, buying the students more time. Astoria saw the distinct red hair of Ginny Weasley jinxing her way through a cluster of cloaked figures, but somewhere behind her, she heard sinister voices.

“Weasleys’ bounties are way up!”

“Oh, that’s right! Fifty Galleons a head alive. They’re certain to have information on Undesirable Number One! But if she’s dead, we’ll still get a good bit of the prize!”

Ginny saw the pair lock on her ran a wider circle away from the castle to avoid them. Astoria changed course and ran after the Death Eaters, who couldn’t seem to make up their minds between violent red and lethal green curses. Astoria managed to get a decent enough aim on them from behind, but not enough to trust herself to use the Killing Curse.

“ _GLACIUS_! _GLACIUS_!”

The two Death Eaters froze solid in thick, chunky ice, and Astoria rushed between them to get to Ginny. They didn’t get a chance to talk. Dozens upon dozens of figures were Apparating not twenty feet from them. It was a motley crew of more Ministry people, apparent werewolves, and Snatchers. That was too many. Way too many. Even for the giant and Professor Hagrid.

“GET BEHIND ME!” Astoria shouted, and wrenched Ginny backwards by the robes.

Astoria finally got a proper crack of the whip like she had with the Blasting Curse on the funeral parlour. Actually, better. Much better. Her whole body tingled.

“ _FIENDFYRE_!”

The fire that came from that dread wand rumbled like a landslide down the banks, sending smoke from the dead grass into the air. It was a heat like no other heat, a heat that could contextualise the temperature of stars. It was a bad decision for Astoria’s already dry eyes to use elemental fire, but nothing else she knew could get that many people away from them so quickly.

Ginny stared at Astoria from the side, and Astoria was thankful that she could not see beyond the growing tower of deadly flame. The wind kicked up the fire rapidly, and she could hear her enemies suffer on the other side. It was not a sound she wanted. Fortunately, the cracking sound of Disapparition also sounded through the roar of the flames, so perhaps the group would know better and not all get burnt to ash. Astoria didn’t want to be a murderer, but both girls and more students would have been dead…

 _Self-defence, self-defence_ , Astoria chanted in her head. As Fiendfyre was wont to do, the figures of grotesque animals materialised from the scorching magic. Astoria did not want that part of the spell. She knew it was unnecessary. She had read about this. She could do it. With as much dynamic motion as the living flame, Astoria whipped at the hungry, flaming creatures over and over again to tame the spell. The cracks of her wand met with more cracks of Disapparition from the other side. Good. They were not coming, they were leaving. They were leaving her the _hell alone_.

Ginny had not stood there uselessly — she was a talented girl. She cast a massive Shield behind them to protect them on all sides. When Astoria looked over her shoulder, it seemed the Shield was getting less and less necessary. Every Death Eater still standing was cowering at the sight of the Fiendfyre. They would try to look for weaker prey than the two girls. Luckily, Professor Hagrid and his companion were thunderously powerful protectors.

Astoria violently beat the disobliging flames all the way down from fifteen feet to five. She was the caster, not the victim. _She_ was the witch, and this was her wand, her tool, her power. With the flames so low, Astoria realised that she had stirred up some confusion amongst the remaining enemy forces as to whether they were fighting one of their own. After all, the butchered shape of her wand was more distinctive than her face between the wrathful flames. They didn’t know it was just Astoria Greengrass; they only knew that whoever they were fighting had Disarmed Rabastan Lestrange. More fearful of raising their wands against a victor over Rabastan than of disobeying orders to investigate the grounds, the remaining enemies Disapparated.

Sweating buckets, Astoria thrashed the flames further down whilst Ginny gave her updates on what she could see between the gates. Snape was out on the grounds, along with the Carrows, but Professor Hagrid had made his way into the Forbidden Forest, which was guarded by “Grawp,” the giant.

“Hagrid got away!” Ginny said triumphantly. “The Carrows look like they don’t know what to do!”

Snape stifled the Caterwauling Charm; it no longer screeched in their ears. Astoria let out a long, dry breath as she snuffed out the last of her own spell. Some help would have been nice, but only the wand that cast Fiendfyre could be the wand to undo it. The grass, topsoil, and subsoil were gone where the flames had reached. It left an amazing, deep exposure of red-hot rock. Being so close to the heat had made Astoria thirsty, and she desired anything cold.

 _Cold_ …

With sudden terror, she looked back at the Death Eaters she had frozen — the Fiendfyre was more than enough to have melted them free. Ginny noticed the same moment Astoria did: the pair was right outside Ginny’s Shield, slicing Dark cuts into it that could not be reinforced.

“ _P-Protego Nidhogg_!” Ginny screamed, a bit unsurely, and she gasped at the sensation in her arm as the black dome spiralled outward, cracking the fair blue Shield to bits as it pushed wider round Ginny and Astoria.

Faster than Astoria’s typically did, the Shield’s dragon emerged from the nest of Ginny’s spell and sank its teeth into the Death Eaters. The dragon flung them up in the air, and their bodies hit the outside of the Shield with a smack that made both girls gasp. They were, this time, dead. Ginny was markedly disturbed and lowered her wand, eradicating the spell.

“Oh — oh no —” Ginny choked.

“They — they were going to kill you — they were saying — there’s bounty on your head, Ginny,” Astoria heaved.

“There’s… There’s a better way than this, Astoria…”

“They’re no good, Ginny — they were casting the Killing Curse at your head when I ran down here! It’s okay, Ginny, it’s okay…”

 _Self-defence, self-defence_.

Ginny tied her hair back with a bright yellow band on her wrist. With wet eyes, she looked Astoria up and down and conjured her some extremely welcome water. Astoria drank it to the bottom. Ginny conjured more water to get the encrusted blood off Astoria’s face. Astoria knew she must have looked like a walking hell. Without all the brown and red stains in the way anymore, Ginny noticed something else.

“Oh my God! What happened to your eyes‽”

Astoria couldn’t say the words even if she wanted to. The bruises made her entire face hurt, and there was no alleviating the dry, burning itch. Every time she blinked, it salted the cuts. However bad it looked to Ginny, it felt worse.

“Wh-What’s that by the way?” Ginny asked. “ _Isn’t that the Lestrange’s wand_ ‽”

“About the first foot of it is. The rest is for show.”

“What‽”

“He kidnapped me, Ginny, that’s how this all happened. I’m so sorry I set off the Caterwauling Charm. I didn’t know your group was having a meeting outside. I had nowhere else to go.”

“RABASTAN KIDNAPPED YOU‽”

Clearly, people had not been told that she was missing. Astoria wondered what the hell Snape had been doing this whole time. The Carrows had to have known… Were Astoria’s roommates okay? They had to know, too; Astoria had never come back inside that evening. Why hadn’t Professor Sinistra done _anything_ …?

Astoria was upset, but Ginny was wholly beside herself. She was yammering about whom she could tell, who could possibly help them. That was not relevant anymore.

“ _Ginny_ ,” Astoria interrupted.

“What? We’ve got to — we’ve got to get you some—”

“Ginny, no. You need to get out of here. The train for Easter holiday leaves tomorrow morning, but you can’t get on it. That’s how Luna was imprisoned. You _cannot_ be there. You have to go _now_. There’s a new bounty for your family. They’ll do worse than _this_ ,” Astoria said, waving at her crusty eyes.

Ginny’s eyes fell on Astoria’s blackened veins.

“I-Is that… is that _blood magic_ , Astoria?”

“Wasn’t my idea. Come along.”

“But you’ll need — a Blood Replenishing Potion — we’ve got to…”

“Come along, Ginny.”

If Astoria’s face didn’t look the way it did, Ginny never would have listened to her. Some of Ginny’s tough-girl exterior whittled, and she followed Astoria round the edge of the volcanic, Fiendfyre-damaged ground.

“Pay attention, Ginny. Easter holiday is from tomorrow to the thirteenth of April. Do not come back on the thirteenth. _Do not come back at all_. You can Apparate, can’t you? You’re very good at it in class.”

“I—”

“You just picture your destination, and—”

“I know the rules of Apparition, Astoria!”

“Right, then go. Leave your things.”

“It’s not my _things_! What about _you_?” Ginny asked. “They’ll come for that wand!”

Ginny just wouldn’t leave. The Carrows were bound to investigate the enormous char in the ground. There wasn’t time to spare. But Ginny grabbed both of Astoria’s arms.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING‽ DON’T BRING ME!” Astoria yelled, wrenching free.

“WE CAN PROTECT YOU!”

“NO, YOU CAN’T!”

Though a one-second fantasy of hiding out with a fellow blood-traitor family touched Astoria’s mind, the faces of Hestia, Flora, Professor Sinistra, and Draco were more potent.

“ASTORIA, PLEASE!”

“NO! THIS IS WHERE I HAVE TO BE! YOU HAVE TO GO, GINNY!”

“WHAT WILL _YOU_ DO‽”

“I’LL FIGURE SOMETHING OUT! I HAVE SO FAR, HAVEN’T I‽”

The Carrows passed through the gates and crested the hill, though they halted at the enormous sea of embers carved into the ground. Ginny hit both Carrows with a single, large Bombardment Charm. They were making too much noise to be down for the count, though.

“I need to tell you something,” Ginny huffed as her eyes trailed the smouldering ground.

“IS NOW REALLY THE TIME‽”

“I haven’t told anyone this! The Sorting Hat — it almost put me in Slytherin! My brothers always said I was supposed to be one of you to tease me, but—!”

“Well, I’m glad for your sake you weren’t Sorted here!” Astoria cried out. “Now go!”

“ _I can’t leave you here_! Slytherin, it’s — it’s about sticking together! P-Power in numbers! Brotherhood!” Ginny blethered.

A different breed of brotherhood was making his way down the property. Ginny had supposedly duelled Amycus on the night of Dumbledore’s death, but she wouldn’t make it against him this time. This time she had struck Alecto. Amycus wasn’t interested in the Weasley’s new bounty; he wanted a blood offering in exchange for Alecto’s minor bruise. Unlike Astoria, Ginny still had a family who thought she was alive. Astoria wasn’t going to let that change on this make-believe hearg to Alecto.

“ _GO_!” Astoria roared at her utmost possible volume.

She had been unafraid to reveal their exact location with the sound of her voice, because it finally, _finally_ forced Ginny to Disapparate. And despite Ginny’s fervent attempt, Astoria wouldn’t let her grab her for Side-Along. With Ginny finally safe, Astoria turned and faced both Carrows alone.

 _I only fear what I don’t know_ , she told herself. _I only fear what I don’t know_.

She knew her opponents unhealthily well.

Astoria’s crawling skin reminded her that Alecto and Amycus held only infantile magic compared to Rabastan. Or so she had thought. They did not aim their wands at her, but at each other, the sight of which made no sense until Astoria remembered…

 _Twin wands_.

“ _Flagrante_!” said Amycus the exact moment Alecto said “ _Crucio_!”

A dreadful noise filled the grounds like train wheels sparking against metal. The Carrows’ spells met in the middle and conjoined like a parabolic rope. Light met light, and the shade bled to gold. The pair’s spell-thread continued to splinter until they were surrounded in a netted, gilded shield, and their feet lifted off the ground…

 _No way_.

Astoria hurried further down the hill because there was no way around that cage the Carrows were making. The twins held their wands with both hands, inched the connected spell towards the damaged pit, and floated over its heat unscathed. They reached the other side of the Fiendfyre damage, and though they still continued to float, they were now wrenching their twofold spell away from each other and towards Astoria. Alecto had bragged about their wands before, but Astoria had had no idea they were capable of this. She had to Disarm at least one of them, or else she’d get a Cruciatus Curse that felt like burning alive.

“ _Expelliarmus_!” she cast at Amycus, but the gold net round them worked better than any Shield. Astoria couldn’t get a single spell in, so she was forced to cast her own Shield again and simply try to sustain the force. The Carrows’ spell hummed ever louder, and they finally discharged it towards her like a killer slingshot. It collided with Astoria’s black Shield, vibrated like a suffering eardrum, and busted a hole clean through it.

Amycus’s and Alecto’s feet briefly touched the ground again, and their net vanished for but a moment only for them to do the same thing.

“ _Fractura maxima_!”

“ _Defodio_!”

Astoria’s Shield would not withstand a second hit, and even if she cast a new one, she was on the road to tiring out much sooner than they were. But the Carrows dual spell was enormous, glowing, and impossible to miss. If Astoria could just get a good hex right at the heart of the thing, maybe they could properly duel without any other cutesy wand tricks.

The Carrows were having the time of their lives with their sparking gold spell. They must have thought Astoria was brainless the way she dropped her Shield. But that combo they made was enormous — she couldn’t miss it. As they wrenched it toward her, she met them head-on.

“ _PRIOR VENARE_!”

Return to sender, bitches.

The gold spell split with the sound of an angered wasp’s nest, and the jets of light went back to the Carrows. The magic didn’t hit them as hard as it would have hit Astoria. Alecto was Gouged on the shoulder, and Amycus had to switch his wand to his left hand as his right took the Bone-Shatter Curse. They were not finished with Astoria, nor was she finished with them. Like Alecto had always wanted, this had become personal.

All three duellists shouldered a sense of unease, since the lavalike ground ran parallel to the fight unfolding. One false step, and the pain would be at _minimum_ equivalent to the curses flying back and forth. Astoria was grossly disadvantaged by about thirty years of duelling skill and four working eyes, but she kept parrying curses because her heart told her to stay alive with every pounding beat. The Carrows cast their spells _alla breve_ in a march, which was challenging to counter with the waltz time Astoria’s magic knew. Each time Astoria tried to cast something that had more build-up, they would leap on the opportunity to unite their magic again and send a double-headed monster of a curse at her. Each one was harder to behead than the last, but she persisted. This whip was terrible to aim, but it snagged spells like a frog’s tongue to flies, and the closer she got, the easier to read their movements became.

“This is gettin’ ridiculous! A teenaged girl! Did Lestrange Imperius her?” Amycus spat.

Alecto breathed, “No. I’d know her eyes anywhere, even through the blood.”

“You tellin’ me the creep’s readin’ our moves with Legilimency‽” Amycus protested. “I’ve _had it_ with all these fucking Legilimens!”

It hardly felt like Legilimency to Astoria when each and every blink of her eyes was a perdition of pain. But now that they brought it up, it didn’t seem like a half-bad idea. They couldn’t parry or block Legilimency, could they? Astoria took one look at the wrinkles on Alecto’s pasty forehead, met her eyes, and cracked her wand hard, arching it back toward herself in its recoil.

“ _LEGILIMENS_!”

The spell collided with Alecto so hard that she fell onto the hot rock, and for a few moments, all Astoria picked up on was her pain. With a cry, Amycus pulled his sister from the burning rock and put out the fire on her smoky clothes.

“WHY DIDN’T YOU LET ANYONE KNOW‽” Astoria screamed out to Alecto. “YOU KNEW I WAS ATTACKED! YOU HEARD THE HOWLERS RABASTAN LEFT! YOU LEFT ME TO DIE, ALECTO! _TO BE_ _MURDERED_!”

Alecto’s immediate memories started pouring into Astoria with grisly detail. Alecto, indeed, had a bell in her office to alert her to anyone leaving the castle grounds on Hogsmeade days. Upon Astoria’s kidnapping, the bell had been particularly loud. When Alecto ran down to catch Astoria disobeying the Hogsmeade ban, she was met with Rabastan’s Howlers, which demanded that Professor Sinistra come alone to meet him at the funeral parlour and leave her wand outside. Rabastan’s Howlers spoke plenty of lies about sparing Astoria’s life under certain conditions. Alecto had intercepted the “ransom” notes before they ever reached Professor Sinistra and kept the kidnapping secret, distracting everyone with the news of Cornelius Fudge’s death.

Alecto then Confunded every person who would have noticed Astoria’s absence. Thus, Astoria’s roommates thought she was sneaking about with Draco, whilst Draco thought she was with her roommates. Professor Sinistra and the other teachers would not have seen Astoria that evening anyway. Regardless, no amount of evidence would have been able to convince the teachers that something was amiss under the hold of Alecto’s spell.

Alecto had given up trying to shape Astoria into a next-generation Death Eater, believing Astoria’s death would catalyse the bloom of Dark magic in her nieces. Astoria would serve as one more example of what happened to people who defied Voldemort.

Astoria’s life mattered nothing to Alecto, so Alecto’s integrity mattered nothing to Astoria. The Legilimency became more uncomfortable, but this was how Rabastan did it. Astoria kept digging until it hurt them both, until she collided with a very bad wall that made Alecto scream and grab her head. The memories behind that wall inundated many senses, the way they did when Astoria jolted from her sleep. Alecto shoved the Legilimency out instantly with sheer agony alone.

“Alecto, damn it, get a hold of yourself! C’mon, you been through Legilimency before! Pull it together!” Amycus shouted, bracing her at the shoulders as she continued to squeeze her head and cry.

“She — She —” Alecto wailed, “ _She made me remember_ _again_ , _Amycus_!”

Amycus had been frightening before, but he was a new kind of horror now. After leaving a spell upon Alecto to tend her burns, his hands slid off her shoulders, and he turned around wide-eyed, like someone with nothing left to lose. He traced Astoria’s sprint with his wand, brimming with nothing less than a Killing Curse — no, something _worse_.

“ _Fractura neurocranium_.”

Astoria clung to her life and rounded the far edge of the heated rock as Amycus’s curse blasted a boulder to a hot pulp. Astoria’s eyes acted up again, and she could scarcely see, but that could have been her skull… She had to act…

 _Got them_.

She whipped the aching Carrows into the hot pit, and they fell screaming at the top of their lungs. Alecto hit her head against the hot ground and was out, and Amycus called down all the gods and called up all the devils… He hurried to lift Alecto out of the Fiendfyre ash at the cost of his own skin, and started making his way toward the edge of the damaged ground.

Astoria recalled from the Legilimency dive that Alecto had Astoria’s wand on her person, and Mobilised her clean out of her brother’s arms. She might have stolen a baby from its mother the way he reacted. But the more she was distracted by his noise, the less she’d get done. Astoria scrambled across the muddy grass and reached into Alecto’s sweaty robes, finally retrieving her cherry wand. Yet it didn’t feel the same as this new one. It didn’t quite do what Astoria wanted it to _do_ …

“ _DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE_!” Amycus seethed through his injuries. “ _I’M GONNA MAKE YOU WISH YOU WEREN’T BORN, GREENGRASS_!”

Astoria ignored him. He was busy trying to get out of the scarred ground in one piece. Astoria hovered over Alecto, the woman who had made her vomit Muggle water and oxtail soup. The woman who abused her best friends. Alecto looked so harmless lying unconscious on the black grass, like someone people would walk up to and ask, “Are you alright, ma’am?” But Astoria knew why Alecto looked so normal: her eyes were closed, and her hands were to herself.

One of those idle hands had a sigil scarred on the palm to match Astoria’s. Who would have thought that Astoria could have piqued a Dark witch’s interest in practising a new spell? Astoria was almost proud, though it wasn’t an honour. She looked into the beady, skin-milk eyes of the double-headed snake tattooed on Alecto’s neck. It twisted and silently hissed at her with both mouths.

Based on the proximity of Amycus’s noise, Astoria didn’t have much time to pick her next spell, and she grew disgusted with herself for stalling. Astoria had never admitted it to herself before, but there had been times she leaned into Alecto’s false touch, times the very source of her injuries had been a twisted comfort. To be held and hummed to after all the fucking pain… Alecto _knew_ what she was doing. Was it Stockholm syndrome? That’s what Rabastan would have called it. Astoria would never have that for him, but whatever she may have felt towards Alecto, she had to fight.

 _How much would it take to turn me into you, Allie Carrow_?

It was a foul but powerful thought, triggered by all those times Alecto had begged Astoria for reassurance — “What would you have done?”

Although the ingredients that had made Alecto were vastly different from what made Astoria, the _number_ of those different ingredients was not so vast. A few key variables, and more things could have been wrong with the soil at Quennell Park. There was one big piece that wouldn’t change regardless of the situation, though. For all the violence Astoria had recently committed, she didn’t embrace it the way Alecto did. Fundamentally, Astoria was a merciful person. She recalled the change Nott Sr had undergone after Obliviating himself. Rashly, she wished the same for Alecto, because what Alecto bore so deeply in her brain was a precipice of ruin.

So she whipped Alecto across the face and said, “ _Obliviate_.”

“Wha– _NO_!”

Wrong move again. Amycus acted like Astoria had _killed_ Alecto. Panicked tears evaporated off the trail they left in the dirt on his face, and his shoes melted away as he climbed out of the near-fire. Astoria readjusted the leather cord, anticipation of her next target burning through all her half-open injuries.

“ _DON’T_! DON’T YOU HURT HER! DON’T YOU KNOW WHEN’S _ENOUGH_ , YOU FUCKING MONSTER‽” Amycus shrieked, unaware of her real intentions.

He got within range to try to kill Astoria again, coming fearsomely too close.

“ _Obliviate_ ,” Astoria said, and the gash from the whip opened on his head.

Something was wrong. She could already feel that she had not saved the Carrows with the Memory Charm. Amycus, having been knocked to his belly, was completely dazed from the aftereffects of the charm and seemed to not know that Astoria was even present. His mind felt the same, though. Everything felt the same.

 _But it worked on Theodore’s dad_! Astoria protested the lack of meaningful change.

Astoria lined up the whip again. This wasn’t fair to Flora and Hestia. Was her magic too weak for a Memory Charm? Was it this stupid whip? Theodore’s dad had forgotten almost everything, but the Carrows lolled between the levels of consciousness the same dreadful people as they ever were. How could they hold so dear the very things that made them so miserable? Was this what grudges felt like?

Astoria’s heart crumbled at her own naïveté. She had not created — could not create — a family for Flora and Hestia as much as a house could not be built from rotted wood. Suddenly, both Carrows Levitated into the air away from the heat and fell safely onto softer grass. Snape was behind them. With the scene at Hagrid’s hut finished, Snape walked alone. His expression was illegible. He gruffly handed Astoria a phial of foul-smelling Blood Replenishing Potion. She drank it in one gulp lest she get sick from the taste and threw the phial to the ground. It seemed like Snape thought she was the last of the Dumbledore group. Didn’t he _know_? Couldn’t he see it on her mangled face? _Rabastan_ …

“We must inform your Head of House and the Matron about your wounds,” said Snape.

“ _YOU ARE MY HEAD OF HOUSE_!” Astoria raged at him, spit and blood flying from her. “ _YOU_! _YOU ARE_!”

A vein in Snape’s forehead popped with angry tension, but he did not return her screams. His eyes fell on the trailing wand. His face wrinkled once he got a good look at her.

“Your eyes are… Miss Greengrass, I was unaware of your emergency. Much has been happening with the news of Fudge, and I have not been anywhere near Alecto today.”

All stupid excuses. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“What are you — _afraid of her_ ‽” Astoria scowled. “Go have a look at her, Snape, she’s not contagious!”

“Miss Greengrass… my utmost loyalty lies with the Dark Lord. I had no reason to suspect Rabastan Lestrange was not with him tonight based on our orders.”

“GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME WITH THAT ‘DARK LORD’ RUBBISH!” Astoria screamed, dragging the whip straight onto the ground in front of her, unsure of what she would dare to cast.

“Astoria, drop that wand, and keep yours. You _must_ listen to me,” Snape said through his teeth. “ _Drop that wand_.”

Ha! She would have sooner sacrificed the cherry. Nothing had made such intricate paths of her magic this way before, except perhaps the silver lime wand her father had sworn against at Ollivander’s all those years ago. This wand had taken her mind and her blood. It was as good as her own bones and marrow.

“Astoria! Oh, my heavens, Astoria! Astoria!”

Professor Sinistra’s voice was like music. She arrived by Snape’s spot with her hands over her mouth.

“Astoria, what’s happened to your eyes‽” she cried. “Oh, Astoria, give Professor Snape that wand, dear. It’s okay. It will be okay. Come now.”

Astoria, too, started to cry, but the tears were like acid and came out the wrong spot. The sting only made her cry more. She dropped her beloved new wand onto the grass and ran to Professor Sinistra’s arms, bawling. Snape slinked over and retrieved the instrument, rolling it up and putting it into his pocket. All Astoria succeeded in was getting blood on Professor Sinistra’s nice dressing gown. Several other teachers were walking out to the grounds.

“Fiendfyre?” Professor Sprout gasped concernedly upon seeing the damage to the grounds.

“Shh, Astoria, shh. Here, let me see your face. Hold your face up, dear.”

Astoria didn’t want to. She didn’t want Professor Sinistra to use Legilimency and see what all had happened. She couldn’t let Professor Sinistra see that. She had to keep her away from that! Professor Sinistra would only blame herself!

The professor’s cool hands touched Astoria’s cheeks and lifted her face up. For the very first time, Astoria fell into a wavelength with her, and her dark brown eyes felt like home. Professor Sinistra did not use a wand, only her hands, to clean Astoria’s face completely. She ran her thumbs very gently under Astoria’s lower lashes, magically sealing the damage. The bruises were still dark and painful, but the wounds were gone. The stinging, the blood, the mortification, it was gone.

 _I’m so sorry_ , Professor Sinistra thought as she cried too loudly to speak. _I am so, so sorry. This is my fault. I was incredibly selfish. If I had not sought your companionship, you would never have had information Rabastan wanted. If I had not forced myself into your life… This is all my fault… I ruin everything I touch…_

 _Stop it_! Astoria returned, holding her gaze on Professor Sinistra’s eyes. _Stop that nonsense! I love you! You’re just the same as family! This is his fault. Professor, he WANTS you to think this is your fault. That’s who he is! I saw in his head!_

Professor Sinistra rested her head atop Astoria’s and squeezed her tightly.

 _Professor_ , _I reached a wavelength with Rabastan_ , Astoria thought with shame. _Why did it happen_? _Is there something wrong with me_?

 _No, dear. You know the answer yourself. He held that wand against your skin when he used Legilimency. All you did was use it back. You partially disarmed him in January. You developed the power to reach Legilimency wavelengths. It merely acted as your wand_ , Professor Sinistra confirmed.

But it wasn’t her wand anymore, Astoria begrudged. It was in Snape’s pocket, going back to its wretched owner. And behind Snape, the Carrows were beginning to stir.

“Am? What happened? You’re _burned_ …” Alecto inhaled.

“Aurora,” Snape warned aloud.

“I know.”

Professor Sinistra’s grip became more firm than affectionate, and she started leading Astoria back round the far edge of the rock.

“We must go.”

Astoria shut her mouth. She would have been a hypocrite not to, considering the dramatics she had had with Ginny. Professor Sinistra brought her over the edge of the Apparition point. Astoria held on to her arm tightly and shut her eyes, trusting the professor completely.

~

They journeyed together far through Apparition. Now it was deathly cold and windy. Astoria thought she heard screeches and flapping wings above her. Her eyes struggled to adjust, but just as they were about to, Professor Sinistra cast a Shield charm that was far too bright, and she shut her eyes once more.

“Hey, girl! Whatcha doing all the way out here?”

It sounded like Ms Glenda Chittock. Astoria squinted past the Shield and saw the woman’s hair in a big beehive. Her skin looked even bluer through the light of the Shield.

“Whooo! What in Carmilla’s closet happened to Astoria’s eyes?” Ms Chittock gasped.

“Glenda,” Professor Sinistra said sternly.

Astoria blinked and saw the women communicate silently through Legilimency, embarrassed that Professor Sinistra was relaying Astoria’s tale of capture.

“Yeah, no problem at all! Come right this way!” Glenda said aloud, and they started walking along rocks. The way the wind was, Astoria knew they must be very high in the mountains.

“Hey, Mama, it’s Aurora and her girl,” Ms Chittock’s voice echoed along the terrain. “I’m not turning them away, so you’d better do your thing with the others.”

“Glenda, I swear—” replied the mother, obscured.

“Do your thing and let me know.”

Glenda proceeded to cover her pointed ears. Astoria did at first, too, but she didn’t hear anything happen. Professor Sinistra was not holding her ears, so Astoria let go. Ms Chittock uncovered her ears moments later and waved the pair onward. Astoria felt an amazing weight of magic on her body even through the Shield. Astoria looked beyond the Shield’s light to see a beautiful rockface, full of glittering crystals. Amazing, greenish claws seemed to hang from above them. They were in a cave.

“We’ve a place set up for Dad and me,” Ms Chittock said brightly. “It’s not much, but it’s kinda like a house on the inside. It took a lot of magic, I’ll tell ya that!”

“And the others…?” Professor Sinistra asked.

“Everyone’s been ordered to stay away from you two. Mum and my brother might come by, though. Well, Mum definitely will. She lives here. But they won’t do anything. You know they’re good about that, Aurora.”

Ms Chittock laughed, but it wasn’t funny to Professor Sinistra. Ms Chittock then addressed Astoria.

“Mum can get that blood magic out of you easily, if you, er—”

“ _Glenda_!” Professor Sinistra gasped, affronted.

“It’s all right, Professor,” Astoria intervened. “It burns. If a vampire can fix my arm…”

Professor Sinistra shook her head, saying, “There has to be some other way.”

“There is no other way! Don’t you think I know a thing or two about blood magic, girl?” Ms Chittock said with equal insult. “Look, the poor thing’s wound’s suffering. She’s got magic on it now, but that’s not gonna hold. You want her to bleed out overnight or what?”

Professor Sinistra had was too fraught with guilt over what had already happened to consider letting a vampire come into direct contact with Astoria.

“Let’s settle in and then take care of it,” Astoria suggested. “I don’t mind.”

Ms Chittock magically opened up a thick, glittering hatch in the cave. They all had to stretch their legs over it to get inside, and then Ms Chittock sealed it tightly. Everything, in fact, was held tightly with magic on the inside. It was warm, with lots of yellow candles and a fire crackling gently in the corner. A few coats were hung on the side of the wall, which was rocky, but not wet. The wall circled into an area with shelves carved out of rock. It had cauldrons and lots of canned and dry goods for, well, human tastes. Somewhere in the shadow, there was a stir, and a middle-aged man hobbled out with a red-tipped wand.

“Oh, hi, Glenda. I didn’t hear you leave. Is everything all right? Is your mum already off? Oh, hello, Aurora! So good to see you again.”

“Mum’s still round here somewhere,” Ms Chittock said. “Dad, there’s a girl in trouble and she’s gonna be staying with us for the spring holiday.”

“Oh, from Hogwarts? Oh no, what’s happened to her eyes?” Mr Chittock said.

Astoria looked round the room. To the left was a large area with even deeper alcoves carved into the stone. Two of them had mattresses and blankets, and the others were full of storage chests. To the right was a kitchenette, only auxiliary to the hearth, but it had a conjure-style sink and an ice box. There was one door off that area, which Astoria presumed was the toilet. Mr Chittock stopped marvelling at Astoria’s injuries and introduced himself.

“How do you do? I’m Rich Chittock, Glenda’s dad. I’m sorry we don’t have better lodging. I’m Muggle-born, you see, so I’m in hiding, and on top of that, my partner is a vampire!”

“Thank you for welcoming me here, sir. My name is Astoria. I’m sorry for the short notice.”

“What a nice-mannered girl! It’s almost midnight. I usually lose my manners round nine o’clock,” Mr Chittock chuckled. “Oh, I used to be better at being on my partner’s sleep schedule. Now that I don’t work night-shift at The Leaky Cauldron anymore, it’s hard to stay nocturnal!”

“Dad, she’s had blood magic set in her, so we’re gonna get her set up for Mum,” Ms Chittock said, gently dismissing her father, who was obviously desperate for conversation.

“Oh, yes, Şebnem will take care of that straightaway! I know it might be scary at first, Miss Astoria, but it will all work out!” said Mr Chittock reassuringly.

Ms Chittock lit more candles with her wand until the hideout was bright enough for Astoria and Professor Sinistra to navigate on their own. As far as facilities went, the cave had a Vanishing-style toilet and a conjure-only bathtub and sink. Astoria sat on the tub’s edge whilst Professor Sinistra looked on, biting her nails. Ms Chittock had Astoria take off her tattered uniform to have full view of her arm. It looked much worse in the light, but Ms Chittock didn’t make a face. Her lack of reaction made Astoria feel less gross.

“This is going to feel strange,” Ms Chittock said gently, and, without a wand, she traced all kinds of patterns with her fingers along Astoria’s skin.

It was not painful, but it felt like her arm had become a balloon. Astoria tried to look brave, but when she heard Şebnem come into the hideout, she felt less so. Ms Chittock sneaked past Professor Sinistra to explain the situation to her mother. A row ensued.

“ _That_ ’ _s Greengrass blood_ ,” Şebnem hissed. “ _Are you trying to give me food poisoning_?”

“No, Mum! No one said you had to swallow it! Just spit it in the sink! Stop being so stubborn! She needs help! She’s only a witch — she can’t heal that wound right!”

“Why do you not fix the girl, then, Glenda?” the mother argued.

“You know damn well I don’t have the bite for something like this!”

“And what is in this deal for me?” Şebnem clucked. “This will certainly accrue her debt. What could a small witch offer me, if not her awful blood?”

“Mum, not everything is about debt between us and the humans!”

“They have siphoned our magic for centuries, butchered it into what _they_ wanted, and labelled it ‘Dark’ to be fashionable! Glenda, you fail to realise that _you_ are the only other thing _besides_ debt between us and the humans!”

“AND WHOSE IDEA WAS I, THEN? YOU KNEW WHAT I WOULD BE!” Ms Chittock screeched in a monstrous voice unlike her usual. “NOW COME OFF IT AND HELP THIS POOR GIRL!”

Astoria poked her nose past Professor Sinistra’s protective pose. Şebnem had dark grey skin and wavy black hair. Her pupils were shaped like a Christmas ornament, with slits all the way to the edge of her red eyes and round in the centre. Şebnem’s manner was formal and arcane. She had little in common with her bubbly, half-human daughter.

“Ms Şebnem, I’m sorry to have caused trouble,” Astoria called. “You don’t have to make my arm pretty again or anything, but I am asking that you help me not bleed out overnight.”

Şebnem glided past her daughter and met Astoria at the door, with Professor Sinistra standing firmly between them.

“Oh, your eyes…” Şebnem said under her breath. “Very well, Aurora. I will help the girl here. I hate Dark wizards more than any other kind of wizard. This is what happens when humans interpret our magic. Disgraceful.”

Like a spirit, Şebnem passed clean through Professor Sinistra, whose whole body shivered angrily.

“I would have stepped aside had I known you meant no harm, Madam,” Professor Sinistra snapped.

“Yes, but that way is more fun,” Şebnem said.

She held Astoria’s gaze firmly until it became obvious Astoria could not look at anything else. Somehow, Şebnem wrapped Astoria in comfort. Then, Şebnem dipped her head quickly and stood up over the sink, into which Professor Sinistra conjured water. Astoria shook her head.

In place of the hastily mended, magical cut in her arm were four little circles over a scar, scabbing already. Astoria hadn’t even felt it. The unsightly black web of veins was still on her skin, though. Maybe she shouldn’t have told Şebnem she didn’t have to make it pretty.

“I can’t fix the appearance, Astoria,” Şebnem spluttered above the sink, “as _you_ must have used blood magic yourself as well.”

 _Oh_.

Astoria rubbed the spot on her arm absent-mindedly. She hadn’t had a choice but to use that spell. And really, she hadn’t had a choice but to have a vampire suck it out of her. She hoped she wasn’t doomed to become a vampire at death.

“That’s an entirely different process, you fool,” Şebnem said, reading her mind unapologetically. “We aren’t filthy like werewolves.”

 _Oh_.

Şebnem evidently got the taste of Greengrass blood out of her mouth, because she strode away saying, “Well, Glenda, I apologise for our disagreement. I haven’t had breakfast yet on account of your emergency. I’ll be off now. I will see you in the morning, Richard.”

Astoria nestled into an alcove in the cave with a conjured mattress and big, fluffy blankets. For safety, Professor Sinistra set a Crucifix over her bed, but Astoria was certain no vampire would want her blood after Şebnem had thrown her toys out the pram about it. In borrowed robes, Astoria slept from exhaustion, but unfortunately, there was no Dreamless Sleep Potion available. After having a vicious nightmare about marrying Rabastan to break Quennell’s curse, Astoria was perfectly awake when Şebnem came into the hideout before dawn. Şebnem’s red eyes had not been so bad the other times Astoria had seen them, but in the pitch black, they were outright scary.

“Er… Şebnem?” Astoria asked very, very quietly, for everyone slept in the same alcove of the cave-house.

“You’re awake? I’ve made no noise,” Şebnem said certainly.

“I was awake anyway,” Astoria said, and she cast the Muffliato Charm on Professor Sinistra, Ms Chittock, and Mr Chittock.

“Watch what you are casting upon my mate and child,” Şebnem hissed, though she already knew the spell was harmless.

“I’m sorry, Madam, but I needed to ask what is wrong with Greengrass blood…” Astoria hinted, not exactly ready to release the Fidelius Charm upon a vampire.

“Most humans take no offense if their blood is unappealing to us. _Do_ you wish to become a vampire? My mate has already arranged to join me upon his human death. Of course, since his parents were mortals, he will always be known amongst us as one Created rather than Born…”

“No, no, no,” Astoria said irritably. “I need to know why my blood is so infamous that you would already know you didn’t like it!”

“Well, it tastes like death. I _would_ say that you should seek a healer, but firstly, I don’t give humans advice, and secondly, nothing appears to be wrong with your family.”

 _Yeah._ ‘ _Appears_.’

“Okay. Thank you, Şebnem.”

Şebnem laughed condescendingly at her and sank into bed with Mr Chittock without waking him. Astoria went back to sleep. The next morning, Glenda shapeshifted herself into a more humanlike woman and set out to get humanlike breakfast. She came back with greasy brown bags, which, based on his reaction, was Mr Chittock’s favourite. Astoria and Professor Sinistra could barely palate the paper-wrapped stuff, but beggars could not be choosers. Since Şebnem was asleep, Astoria spoke quietly, but Mr Chittock informed her that Şebnem’s sleep was “trancelike” and that “bagpipes couldn’t wake her once she’s made up her mind to sleep.” With nothing better to do, Astoria later waved her hand in front of Şebnem’s face. Şebnem slept with her eyes open, but she didn’t see.

Professor Sinistra fell into a depression and repeatedly declined Ms Chittock’s offers to go for hikes. Ms Chittock had to reach a certain spot in the mountains for her wireless to work even though it was magical. Some days, Ms Chittock convinced her half-brother and his daughter to join her (they could turn to bats). She was always gone a long time.

“She’s probably doing _Potterwatch_ , but we’re not allowed to know,” grinned Mr Chittock.

“What’s _Potterwatch_?” asked Astoria.

“Why, it’s the station for the resistance!”

“I, er, didn’t know there was a resistance.”

“What, have you been living under a rock?” Mr Chittock said, then he knocked a fist against the wall. “Oops, guess you have!”

It was heartening to hear that people were doing something against Voldemort’s government _somewhere_. She would have loved to have told Rhiannon. But apparently, the resistance did not impress Professor Sinistra, nor was it news to her.

“Ted Tonks was killed,” the professor said quietly to Mr Chittock later.

“I’ll be. I graduated Hufflepuff with him. May he rest in peace,” Mr Chittock said.

The Tonkses were family friends of the Greengrasses. Astoria had heard her mother warn Mrs Tonks to leave the country, and she bitterly mourned the Tonks family’s loss. They had been, perhaps, too confident that fate was on their side.

On Easter Sunday, the cross hanging over Astoria’s bed was the only celebration of the holiday she received. Between the lines of Alecto’s mess, Astoria had lost the faith that had once been her comfort. It plagued her that her family thought she was in Heaven. If only she could watch over them like that without being dead.

She ate a brown-bag breakfast and canned soup for dinner. Astoria wasn’t afraid of the vampire colony in the mountains, but she had become afraid of being outdoors due to the kidnapping. It wasn’t the same as the depression Professor Sinistra had — it was a cauldron mix of anger, fear, and lack of safety. Her night terrors were now adorned with thunderous noises of the collapsing funeral parlour. She didn’t want to ask anyone to make a Dreamless Sleep Potion, though. She didn’t want to seem needy and damaged. She wanted to be strong, but everything made her jumpy.

After one of many gruesome nightmares, Astoria woke to Şebnem coming back from her long night. The vampire again was offended at Astoria’s waking, apparently being proud of her ability to sneak round soundlessly. Astoria reassured Şebnem’s pride that she was already awake.

“Madam, I would like to ask you something else,” Astoria said nervously, Muffling everyone else in the cave again.

“You are the neediest human I have ever met.”

“Please. I haven’t been able to find information about what’s bothering me. There’s a ghost I know who said he used a Horcrux. How do you get rid of a Horcrux and get the ghost to pass on?”

Şebnem suddenly raked Astoria’s brain very angrily. When she didn’t find anything, she stopped trying to use Legilimency.

“This so-called ‘ghost’ has turned you into a Secret Keeper?”

“Yes, Madam.”

“Well, this ‘ghost’ is no ghost, and he’s trying to kill you. Cut off contact.”

“He’s not trying to kill me, Madam. Can you please tell me about Horcruxes so I can get rid of it?”

Şebnem was centuries beyond the need for emotions, yet she still showed them.

“Horcruxes are… Well, you see, mortals have been trying to make themselves immortal for eons. Contrary to common belief, there is no such thing as immortal. _I_ am not immortal. A _Horcrux_ is not immortal; it is a pitiful, selfish wish for immortality. Humans who make a Horcrux are no better than vampires who drain someone to death whilst feeding. It prolongs one’s life, but it doesn’t save it for all eternity. Thus, it is life wasted. Life is a wonderful thing. Several of my kind — the ones who would gladly make a Horcrux if they _were_ born human — have forgotten that life is not to take. They permeate Muggle literature as horrid creatures.

“I have only known a few individuals throughout my long life who have tried to make Horcruxes. The results are worse than if they were to leave well enough alone. Astoria, Horcruxes are even more powerful than _my_ body. The only way I know to destroy a Horcrux is with basilisk venom. That is almost impossible to acquire. I simply let Horcrux users rot with the fate they have chosen. These individuals work against the interest of all species, of all life.”

Recalling what basilisk venom had done to Rhiannon’s arm, Astoria trusted Şebnem to be correct about its effect on Horcruxes. But she was very confused by Şebnem’s stance and wondered if what she had learnt about vampires was tainted by popular literature, too. It was not very promising if a _vampire_ found a Horcrux offensive.

“Astoria, we are more powerful than your kind. Although our relationship is necessarily parasitic, to wilfully kill one of you would be akin to the Wizards killing the less-powerful Muggles. I am saying this as the best Death Eater-Eater there is!”

“Y-You eat Death Eaters?” Astoria gasped.

“No, I don’t _eat_ Death Eaters, you silly child! I drink their blood, make them weaker! We have been using them for meals since a decade ago. I cannot imagine what sort of havoc they would have wreaked otherwise.”

“Well, they are wreaking havoc!” Astoria exclaimed. “C-Can’t you… can’t you do _more_?”

“Excuse you, we do not engage in the political affairs of humans. Humans have always killed each other, and they always will. They create arbitrary distinctions amongst themselves for the sole purpose of killing each other again! If we were to target every unjust human, we would gorge ourselves to death, and there would be naught left of the human race. That being said, I have tried many times to sink my teeth into Tom Riddle and his company, but… well, we are Dark creatures, and they have stolen Dark magic from us. It is nearly impossible to fight them. Oh, I suspect many things about that Riddle man indeed. Perhaps _he_ …” Şebnem trailed off.

Astoria sighed. If literal vampires couldn’t defeat him…

“Thank you, Şebnem. Thank you for letting me stay here and for talking to me. Everything has been…” she started to choke up, “so hard.”

“I know it has, child. Be quiet, now, I am very tired.”

Şebnem hummed a few notes, and Astoria was lulled into her first dreamless sleep since before Rabastan. Later that morning, though, Professor Sinistra was locked in a distressed conversation with her friend that awakened Astoria.

“That school is the only place I have besides here to take her. They’re attacking everybody. I don’t know what to do. She’s always trapped. This is no life for a young witch.”

“It’s no life for you, either! You know, you both can come with me on my hikes. My brother’s not gonna bite you. His daughter might, though, but she’s only one year old… er, _teething_ …”

“Glenda, it’s not that. It’s this whole situation. We cannot spend the rest of our lives in your mountains. I want a future for her, but I’ve no idea where her family is.”

Astoria would rather live in mountainside caves with a vampire colony and eat Muggle fast food for the rest of her life than ever see the Carrows and Lestranges again. But although Hogwarts was dire, there was so much she had left behind there. She wanted to know her friends were alive. She wanted Uncle Faunus’s pipe back. She wanted her Astronomy N.E.W.T. She even dared to want her life back.

On the eleventh of April, news came from one of Ms Chittock’s _Potterwatch_ sources. The Lestranges were totally confined to Malfoy Manor after bungling another encounter with Harry Potter. It seemed too good to be true, so Professor Sinistra left the hideout to contact Snape, who lived at a place called Spinner’s End. It was the first time in almost three weeks that the professor had moved her body so much, and her absence gave Astoria a surprising bout of separation anxiety.

“She’ll be back soon,” Mr Chittock comforted her with a smile, but he had no evidence. Astoria wondered how someone so optimistic had ended up the life partner ( _and_ afterlife partner) of a cold, saucy vampire.

Two hours later, Professor Sinistra finally came through the magical hatch of the hideout with a sense of triumph about her.

“The Lestranges have been stripped of their titles and are, indeed, confined to Malfoy Manor,” she announced, and everyone clapped. “And due to a certain Memory Charm, the Carrows do not remember the circumstances of Hagrid’s party, their burns, or of our departure.”

Ms Chittock brought in a cake from the outside world for them to enjoy that night. When Astoria asked Professor Sinistra if they would go back to school, though, she unwittingly started an argument. Once it was started though, Astoria maintained it. She wanted to go back and be with her friends and Draco. Professor Sinistra had left behind Winky and her pet Doppelvanga at the castle, as well as many students. Astoria argued and whined until Professor Sinistra couldn’t stand it anymore and hit her with a Silencing Charm.

It was only an emotional reaction, but it was the wrong thing to do. Astoria had a brutal flashback right at the dinner table, and when she came to her senses, she had knocked over her drink. Professor Sinistra, never having outrun the guilt of Astoria being kidnapped in the first place, was ashamed for triggering the flashback, and she locked herself in the bathroom to cry. Ms Chittock and her dad both tried to soothe Astoria, who regretted having brought up Hogwarts at all. Astoria went to bed unhappy, and her leftover cake dissolved into the sink.

“We are going back tomorrow,” Professor Sinistra said the next morning. “Merlin knows that school needs me to watch the students.”

At those words, Astoria felt so stupid for not being able to make up her mind. In the mountains, she would resent the fact that she wasn’t in school. At school, she would miss the nestled safely of the jewelled mountains. She felt immature for having argued so fervently for Hogwarts the previous night, and apologised to the professor, who wouldn’t hear of any “I’m sorrys.”

~

Despite the charm that eradicated the Carrows’ short-term memory of one night, they were as bad as ever when Astoria returned to school. The Carrows confabulated fantastical stories about their burns’ origins for each other’s amusement and indiscriminately blamed whoever caught their dislike each day. Naturally, students ended up in the Hospital Wing with burn wounds. Astoria tried not to blame herself and failed.

The first private moment Hestia had with Astoria was when Alexa was off with her friends and Flora was talking to Professor Sinistra about something that wasn’t Astronomy. Astoria had said utterly nothing about the endless weeks of torture with Amycus and Alecto followed by Rabastan. She had said utterly nothing about caves or vampires or blood curses. She had barely spoken at all, but Hestia needed a conversation partner.

“When we went home for Easter holiday, Alecto asked me a lot about Rhiannon,” Hestia started with difficulty. “And the asking turned into screaming really fast. And the screaming became… well, I had to deny that I was ever with Rhiannon. She seems to think it was you who dated her.”

“I told her that to protect you, Hestia. I was already on Alecto’s bad side,” explained Astoria.

“No. I’m not thirteen anymore. I’m not on your case about that,” Hestia assured. “I’m on my own case about denying that I was with her.”

“You had to, Hestia. You have to lie to Alecto,” Astoria said, not feeling especially verbose.

Hestia lay flat on Rhiannon’s old bed with her hands on her tumbling stomach.

“It hurt to say I was never involved with Rhi. I know she’s not here to know I said those things, but it still hurt. I’m proud to be her girlfriend. And if she’s forgotten me already, I’m still proud to say that I was her girlfriend. She was always my hope.”

“I know, Hestia. I’m sorry you went through that. Really, though, you have to say it never happened. They’ll arrest you,” Astoria stressed.

She had nothing else useful to add. She had had to deny her love of Draco Malfoy enough times. It involved a sturdy “lying mode” that Hestia would need get used to as well.

“Astoria?” Hestia mumbled.

“Yeah?”

“I was scared of them this time.”

The girls stared at each other for a whole minute, full of discomfort.

“Astoria?”

“Yeah?”

“What happened to your eyes?”

Astoria invented a fib about the scars and old bruises beneath her eyes and let Flora, Hestia, and Alexa live in blissful ignorance of her disaster with Rabastan. She knew how it felt to conceal something for another’s good, a behaviour she had begrudged her parents for. It wasn’t only for her friends’ protection, though. When Astoria considered how she might have described the experience to them, she relived it internally. It came back in colour vision.

Draco was there, but he was different. Skinny. Worn. Quiet. He did not come to Astronomy that week, and his absence haunted her as much as Professor Sinistra’s blank expressions and slow rate of speech. Apparently, Astronomy N.E.W.T.s were still happening even though the world was imploding. The very last thing to crumble in society would be its standardised tests.

With school ending on the twelfth of June, and her N.E.W.T. on the nineteenth, that gave Astoria some future timeline, but she could not possibly imagine what summer would be like. Would they be able to stay in Professor Sinistra’s messy house, or would go back to the vampires’ mountains? How old would Astoria be when she located her family and Rhiannon? They might not even miss her by then.

Astoria could not feel anything different about her arm, but the sight would give her away as a Dark witch to anyone who knew about blood magic and would repulse anyone who didn’t. Astoria kept her arm covered at all costs the same way Rhiannon had to for her basilisk wound. But the implications of Rhiannon’s injury were different from Astoria’s. People would take one look at Astoria’s arm and say she was getting busy with Voldemort again.

Throughout the next two weeks, Astoria did not receive a single secret letter from Draco. He avoided eye contact with her and tried even harder to avoid being anywhere she was. This bothered her, not because she felt slighted, but because she knew this was how Draco reacted to trauma. When would she be able to talk to him? In spite of how difficult it was to cast, she still sent her Patronus out each night. Did that help him at all? Did he still recognise the assurance of her feelings? When she tried, very carefully, to meet him in the common room before his shift, he took off like he was afraid.

Rabastan must have said something to Draco to make him feel like it was his fault for not protecting Astoria. Didn’t Draco know what a horrible liar he was? Nothing Draco ever did or didn’t do would have changed the events with Rabastan.

During time she normally would have spent with Draco, Astoria sat with her roommates in the Astronomy library to study for Charms. She was so distractible these days that even the simplest parts of her notes were unreachable for her. Every crackle of the flambeaus on the walls drew her attention from her work. Once, a bird flew by the window and cast a shadow that made her jump out of her seat. Flora and Hestia didn’t say anything, but Alexa giggled thoughtlessly at Astoria’s startle reaction. It did not feel good.

Somewhat bitter, Astoria pulled out her grimoire and the Dark Arts books she had been working through. Dark magic was a shell and a crutch. From her bookmark, she thumbed open _Darkness as Element_ , the one that had taught her all about Fiendfyre, and tried to find a good page in her grimoire to deface. She had filled up Serpentarius’s margins and found herself looking at the first page of Scorpius. She really liked that constellation. She didn’t want to write curses in that part of the book. She doodled a flower instead.

“What sort of deep, Dark sigil is that?”

Hestia’s snoopy joke made Astoria feel better even in grim times.

“I know! It turns a bouquet of flowers into a bouquet of scorpions,” Hestia said.

On their way back downstairs, they came upon Theodore, who made a wide frown. Theodore had a few reasons to be in Astronomy Tower: to patrol as Head Boy, to ask Professor Sinistra about class, or to look for Astoria. Since Theodore was doing well in class and it was only four o’clock, Astoria inferred it was the lattermost. Astoria encouraged her roommates to go ahead of her whilst she and Theodore walked back to the library. She had many questions about Draco on the tip of her tongue, but Theodore was bursting with what he had to say.

“The Carrows really hurt Michael Corner today. You know, the Ravenclaw in that club,” Theodore said urgently.

“There are many Ravenclaws in that club,” Astoria mentioned, unable to place which one Michael was. “Is he all right? Is he in the Hospital Wing?”

“Nowhere else for him to be! I saw him. I feel so awful.”

“There isn’t anything you could have done, Theodore,” Astoria comforted, seeing him to a chair. “If he’s part of Dumbledore’s Army, he knows the Carrows are after him. It’s not his fault, but it is a risk. It’s not like it used to be. Even though you’re Head Boy, you’re stuck working for the Carrows rather than in the interest of the students.”

“No, that’s the thing,” Theodore said frantically. “E-Ever since the Carrows put me on hunting duty, I’ve done everything I could to mislead them! They were about to figure out how the D.A. was communicating, and, well, I Confunded them both. And, er, you see, Michael and Millicent and I, we’ve been, er…”

Theodore’s voice lowered to a whisper even though there wasn’t anyone round.

“We’ve been sneaking kids out of the Cruciatus detentions once there’s enough absinthe in the Carrows’ systems, you know? Michael and his friends know all the secret passageways in the castle, and we send students through those back to their dormitories.”

Astoria had trouble picturing Millicent Bulstrode helping out Gryffindors. Millicent had worked for Umbridge, but maybe she had changed her ways and drawn the line now that her crush on Pansy Parkinson was over. Still, Millicent seemed more the type to swing first-years over her shoulders and curse her way through the halls to safety than to sneak round with Theodore and a Ravenclaw.

Astoria stared at Theodore a bit impolitely; she never would have imagined him being so brave. He was really using his craftiness for good! His group must have rescued countless students before they had “served their time.” Astoria hugged him. Theodore hated hugs and made a funny noise, but he pressed a hand on her back for courtesy’s sake.

“Sorry! Theodore, that’s great! I had no idea!”

“Well, it’s not that great, is it?” he bemoaned. “I can’t believe what they did to Michael. It’s all my fault. He wouldn’t have been pulling that stunt if I—”

“Yes he would!” Astoria interjected. “Those D.A. people are mad! They would have started with or without you, Theodore! Do you know what matters? You and Millicent were there to help! You were able to trick the Carrows into thinking you were on _their_ side!”

“I — I don’t know. Maybe you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right!” Astoria said. “Theodore, I’m really proud of you!”

“I have a bad feeling we won’t be doing much of that anymore,” he sighed.

“But you _have_ made a difference,” Astoria said.

Theodore smiled a bit and said, “Yeah… thank you.”

“Now,” Astoria said, “you know this is coming…”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with Draco,” Theodore anticipated. “He won’t tell me about it, but he’s carrying a new wand, so I can only assume things went downhill at his house.”

Astoria nodded. She hadn’t even seen Draco enough to notice what sort of wand he had. Perhaps there was a battle in which he was forced to participate, or perhaps Voldemort had confiscated his wand. Maybe Draco’s wand had cracked from the Dark magic he was forced to cast. There was no telling.

Astoria and Theodore couldn’t walk back to the Slytherin common room together, but if Astoria had learnt anything from being separated from Rhiannon, it was that friendship was greater than distance. The next night, she wrote Draco a letter with invisible ink borrowed from Flora and a quick consultation in the library on how to make the letter self-destruct without setting the whole castle aflame.

> _Dear Draco_ ,
> 
> _I have been worried about you. I miss your letters. It has been a dreadfully long time since we have spoken, or, I should say, since we have been able to speak. You are always in my thoughts. One such thought I had was that you might be avoiding me because you heard about Rabastan. Perhaps you heard some adorned version of what happened. You are not responsible for his actions against me. Only he is. I have said this a thousand times over, but it is not your job to protect me. I know you believe that avoiding me is the best way to protect me, but I am here for you if you need to talk about Easter holiday. I can never fathom exactly how gruesome it is to go home to You-Know-Who, but you have my support. If you would prefer for me to cut contact, I will, but I will not be able to stop how I feel. My hope has been shaken, but it can’t be erased. I am going through a rough time, rougher than before, and it’s your comfort I seek. I miss you. I love you_.

Astoria couldn’t seem to sign her name. Draco knew her handwriting, and he knew that there was only one person who would send such a message. She waited ages to deliver it securely, and when she saw Crabbe, Goyle, and Zabini go to dinner before the other two, Astoria darted into the boys’ dormitories and flung the letter under his door. He was in there and would be certain to get it before it turned to ash, but she couldn’t wait around to see. She was a danger to him, so she hurried to dinner. Draco sat on the opposite end of the table from her. They finally met eyes that night, and no Legilimency was needed to know the feeling Draco was trying to convey.

~

On the first of May, Astoria made it through the partially-Obliviated Alecto’s class without any trouble finding her. The same would not be true for Amycus’s class, which started at 4:15. It was her last class of the day, and since it was Friday, her last class of the week. She had been counting the days until school let out, unsure of where the world would take her. She knew she would not be able to contact Flora and Hestia, who sat gloomily next to her, but that was nothing new. Amycus and Alecto had never let them have friends over, even before the war, and they weren’t permitted to write anyone, either. Astoria watched Flora run her fingernails through the feather on her quill. The twins would turn seventeen on the twentieth of June. Flora might end up with the Dark Mark, not as a privilege amongst Voldemort’s people, but as a replacement for lost forces. Who knew what would happen to Hestia. Astoria tried to stop the parchment full of worries from unrolling in her head.

As he had been recently, Amycus started class by interrogating everybody about Harry Potter. Since Potter had been missing since last June, no one ever had an answer for him, and they often got hit with the Cruciatus out of Amycus’s need to assert dominance. After that, the students would be asked up, down, left, and right about Dumbledore’s Army, necessarily to the same result. Then, Amycus would make them cast things on each other and take notes. Astoria had filled many of the washed pages of her grimoire that way, but she would never credit Amycus.

Today he cycled back to Flora, his favourite. When her name was called, she exhaled, and her heels clicked to the front of the room. Amycus patted her on the back, and his beady eyes glared at the rest of the students.

“It’s always the same ol’, same ol’ in here, ain’t it?” he leered. “Yeah, that’s what the lot of you’s thinkin’. Well, today, I’d like to try an experiment. Hestia, get up.”

Hestia did not move. Amycus’s top-heavy girth swayed back to Astoria’s table. He stopped directly in front of Hestia, but Astoria could smell his breath, too.

“What do you want?” Hestia scoffed at him.

“Hestia Carrow, I said get _UP_!” Amycus shouted, and he smacked a spell at her that made her bottom leave her seat.

Hestia held onto the desk so as not to go completely airborne and kicked her way back down to the floor. She went belly-to-belly and glare-to-glare with Amycus on her way up the aisle. He followed her closely behind. Hestia stood opposite Flora and rolled her shoulders. Flora had been aghast the whole time. Her skin was as discoloured as Amycus’s burns.

“Don’t worry about it, Flora,” Hestia said loudly, and she stood with her feet apart and arms crossed. “It was only a matter of time before he would pull something like this.”

“ _Hestia_ …” Amycus said dangerously, skulking behind Flora.

“Go on, then, let’s get this over with!” Hestia exclaimed. “Tell Flora to Cruciate me, Amycus! Is this what you and Alecto used to do as tots for fun? We’re all itching to know! _Something_ must have messed you two up, right?”

Through his thin hair, the veins in Amycus’s head became visible, and the whole class heard him heave his breath.

“All right, you little Mudsap, Flora’s gonna do exactly that! _Flora_ …” Amycus snarled, “Cruciate her, or I’ll Imperius you.”

Flora was quivering. Her twin sister’s pluck could not overshadow the deed demanded of her. All year, Flora had deliberately concentrated on weakening her magic before casting curses on her peers. Even though being un-Imperiused made _her_ the caster rather than a tool, Flora could rest assured that she was delivering the lightest possible version of Dark magic. But Flora was unable to raise her wand against her own sister even with the threat of the Imperius Curse pointed at her skull.

“Amycus, I can’t,” Flora mouthed, tears overflowing her wide eyes. “Amycus, I… I _can’t_. Not that.”

“Oh, yes you can. You need to teach Hestia her place if she wants to keep on lovin’ Mudbloods and mouthin’ off to me. We taught you girls better, we did. And _you_ , Flora. You need to learn the importance of obeying orders now. You can’t act this way once you get the Mark. Now, quit your crying and do it, or I’ll _give_ you something to cry about.”

“Amycus, please. Please understand. My own sister,” Flora begged. “You wouldn’t do this to Alecto. You wouldn’t do this to her even if you were ordered, Amycus. _Please_.”

“Your logic’s way off, my little flower,” Amycus laughed grimly. “The Dark Lord wouldn’t order me to do that in the first place.”

“Y-You don’t know that.”

“I _do_ know that, ’cause unlike you, I have faith in him. But I’m above you, see, and I’m ordering you. Trust me, you need to learn here with me, so you don’t learn the hard way with him. Don’t think I won’t Imperius you, Flora.”

“Please. I can’t. That’s Hestia. Uncle, please. Please don’t Imperius me.”

“Aw, Uncle, _pleeeease_ , that’s _Hestiaaa_ ,” Amycus mocked bitterly. “You gonna bottle out on me too, now?”

Amycus made one final warning at Flora’s temple, so she stepped forward and raised her wand at Hestia. Astoria wanted to shut her eyes so that she would not witness the pain on Flora’s face and Hestia’s body. But if she had blinked, she would have missed it.

“ _CRUCIO_!”

Flora turned at the last second and hit Amycus with the full, uncensored force of the incantation. Amycus’s body flew into the window, and hundreds of glass shards fell upon his head. His screams were louder than the cumulative pain he had caused to countless people. Flora’s wand extended almost seamlessly from her hand as she clutched it tighter and stepped closer. For Amycus had caused Flora alone a lifetime of pain.

“AAAGH! _F-F-F-F-FLORA_!” Amycus screamed out.

“OH, SHUT IT!” Flora screamed back.

“ _F-F-FLORA, LE-LET UP_! _LET UP_!”

“YOU’D HAVE MADE ME DO THIS TO HESTIA FOR _MUCH_ LONGER!” Flora belted.

“ _I’M T-T-TRYING T-T-TO T-T-TEACH YOU, DAMN IT_!”

Flora snorted and twisted the knife of her curse, “Aww, I’m a fast learner, Amycus.”

“ _AAAAAARGH_! _A-AFTER ALL WE’VE S-S-SACRIFICED_!”

“ _Oh, quit your effing sob story_!” Flora screeched. “You sacrificed nothing! Everything’s exactly how you wanted it! Just how long did you think you could keep playing _house_ before you’d make a witch like _me_ ‽”

Hestia snapped into action and added another, “ _CRUCIO_!”

Amycus was rendered incoherent, and he convulsed uncontrollably under the force of two wands.

“ _YOU DO_ NOT _TELL ME TO RAISE MY WAND AGAINST MY SISTER_!” Flora thundered.

“ _YOU TOOK OUR WHOLE LIVES AWAY_!” Hestia cried out. “ _YOU HURT YOUR OWN FLESH AND BLOOD_!”

Amycus’s back arched against the hard floor as he continued to wail, and he put both his hands in front of his face, cowering, desperate for the spell he gave others to spare him. The twins moved even closer, their wands nearly touching his head. With a floor-shaking crack from Flora’s seething magic, Amycus passed out from the pain.

A few Death Eaters on patrol heard the commotion. Several Gryffindors raised their wands to fight, but the House of Slytherin was faster, and when the Death Eaters came through the door, Alexa and Montel dove on them and turned them both to pigs. This was not an inconsequential action, and Alecto was certain to come, so Hestia cast a massive Shield over all the Gryffindors. Flora took the Hufflepuffs, and Alexa took the Ravenclaws. Astoria and Montel jumped up side by side, and when Selwyn and Alecto came in blasting an ugly yellow spell with dark grey smoke, they said together:-

“ _SERPENSORTIA_!”

Snakes sprouted from their wands, and in one fluid motion, they sank their fangs into the Death Eaters, who fell to their knees. Selwyn was down for the count, grabbing his now wandless arm, but even as Alecto bit her lip to blood in pain, she killed the conjured snake and slithered herself over to her unconscious brother.

“ _Somnodurus_!” Astoria cast, though it was much too lenient a spell. Alecto went to sleep as her wound continued to ooze red.

Horatio Pershore cast a Bombardment Charm to open the wall more, and everyone spilled out to run for safety. Astoria and Montel conjured more snakes for the hell of it, filling the corridors with the emblem of their disgraced House. She had a feeling they were going to miss dinner.


	25. The Ravenclaw Riddle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 25 - "Erinyes Magaera" by ourfathers.
> 
> Note: McGonagall's and Voldemort's quotes are taken directly from Deathly Hallows (I had to expand McGonagall's for context but anyway, those particular characters' quotes aren't mine).

Astoria snacked on Wandlets and waited for her cupped soup to become edible. She and her roommates were holed up in the dormitory, wondering how they would ever escape the Cruciatus Curse, or worse, from the Carrows after their actions. Alexa was notably terrified, Flora kept a stiff upper lip, and Hestia was somewhere in the middle. She kept checking her framed Foe-Shard from Rhiannon, waiting to see if Alecto would come after them. She hadn’t yet, but somehow that was a different kind of bad.

“We’ll have to hold them off every day, the way Neville Longbottom does. I’ve had enough,” said Flora. “We brought most our stuff. So I’m not going back home.”

“We’ll go on the run! Live off the land! Channel our nomadic origins!” Hestia said eccentrically. “Oh… but Dad…”

Flora’s eyes were unchartable.

“Dad will come if he’s wizard enough.”

Alecto never did come to attack the girls (before bedtime, anyway). Astoria stared at her clock as she lay on her side. It would go off in her ears only, but she had to keep setting it earlier since it was taking her longer to cast a Patronus for Draco’s shift. Her eyes closed.

Something brushed her face shortly after eleven o’clock. Astoria swatted blindly and made contact with several pieces of paper, the only thing that could slip through all their protective enchantments. Her eyes adjusted, and she saw that they were folded paper birds trying to get in her face. She threw the covers off, hurried out the door, and locked it with spells behind her. The paper birds continued their bothering. The common room was only occupied by one person, and he stood with his toes against the bottom step of the dormitory stairs. Astoria ran up to Draco, and when he saw her, he called off the birds.

“Sorry, I didn’t know how else to—”

“Don’t worry about it. What’s wrong?”

Draco was fully dressed. Had his shift changed? He sighed heavily, so that wasn’t it. He lifted up his sleeve, and at a loss for words, simply showed Astoria his Dark Mark. The snake was sliding through the eye holes of the skull, back through the mouth, making a tangled mess. Draco’s muscles were tense. He was being burned.

“H-He’s calling you?” Astoria gasped, and she could not seem to get close enough to him.

“Not me personally. When the Mark burns these days, it means somebody’s captured Harry Potter.”

Astoria chewed the inside of her cheek. Harry Potter was a key figure in the resistance. How awful that he was captured. Draco cleared his throat and took Astoria’s hands.

“What this means is that Potter is probably in Hogsmeade or the castle. Snatchers throughout the country can’t give this signal if they just found him in the countryside. So I’m almost certain he’s round here. And, so, well, the Dark Lord might… no, if Potter’s really here, the Dark Lord _will_ be coming. A-And he’s worse than what people already know about him. He killed a whole group in my house over the holiday. H-He’s probably going to cause a lot of trouble here, and—”

“Draco, what do you need me to do?” Astoria cut in, steadying him.

“I would just like for you to remember me if I… if something—” he shook.

“ _Draco_ , what do you want me to be _doing_?”

“I want you to do exactly whatever the teachers say to do. I want you to be where the teachers tell you to be. Don’t raise your wand at any Death Eaters. Astoria, you have to promise me. Th-This could be over really quickly if we can just get Potter to him—”

“Draco, what are you saying?” Astoria grimaced. “That’s not right. He’ll kill—”

“ _Astoria_ , if we lose Harry Potter a third time, my parents and I _will_ be killed, and so will others. He’ll kill anyone who raises a finger at him. He’ll kill me and my family, and everyone in the school if we lose Potter a third time! I’m not telling you this to make you angry. I’m telling you I want you and everyone else to live. I almost lost my life last month. This is it,” Draco said with a clenched jaw.

He briefly put the wand he had in his pocket. It had a beautiful, gem-studded handle and a black wood. His mother’s. That would work for him, but Astoria was petrified. She did not know, and she actually did not want to know, where Draco had to go or what he had to do. It seemed like they should exchange something, but there was nothing on her except…

“Draco, take this. Here, take this, here,” she fretted, pulling off the Foe-Shard bracelet. “Here, I’m sorry it’s got a girly pattern on the band. I’m sorry, but please, just take it. I mean, don’t look at it too much, it’s not going to help _that_ much — look at what’s ahead of you. You’ll have to pay attention to what’s round you over this thing, but if it helps at all…”

Draco’s eyes were red, and he wrapped his hand behind Astoria’s head, pulling her to his shoulder so she would not see his tears. He kissed above her ear. She could not get her hands to let go of the fabric on his back. She had to breathe him in. She had to memorise every mole on his neck, every curve of his face, the way his collar was folded, the way he parted his hair.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Draco, I will always love you.”

“I’ll always love you, too. No matter what. _I’m so sorry_.”

He hissed a little at the burn on his arm, tore from Astoria, and left the common room. She followed him to the edge, and from the hall she heard him say a last-moment direction: “Wake your friends so you’re all ready.”

Astoria hesitated no longer. She went back to her dorm, and she lit all the lamps.

“Flora,” she said, and Flora was awake.

“Hestia,” they both said, and Hestia’s wand was ready.

“Alexa,” they said with a touch to her shoulder, and Alexa tied her shoes.

“Should we wake others?” Hestia asked.

“No, they might do something stupid,” Astoria said, thinking of Diane Carter’s dormitory. “We’re going to wait in the common room to see if any teachers come.”

Astoria tucked her grimoire into her inner robe pocket and, in addition to the Anti-Theft Charm already on it, she Stuck it to the inside. It could not fall into the wrong hands whilst she was gone. She brought her uncle’s pipe, too, even though it didn’t do anything. Hestia dosed out foul-smelling Energy Potions to each of the girls so they would stay awake and alert for any emergency.

“What if it’s Amycus?” Alexa asked, her blonde fringe covering her worried eyebrows.

“We go where he tells us to go, unless it is to our deaths,” said Astoria firmly.

Everyone was taken aback, but when Hestia began to protest, Flora said, “She’s right. If You-Know-Who is really in the castle, we’ll have to do what they say.”

“Why do we have to be out here?” Alexa said loudly, but not angrily.

“So we’re the first to react,” Astoria said. “If you want to wait in the dorm and not see what’s happening, go ahead back.”

Alexa quieted. There was no sound for a long time. The four girls stood by the fireplace, wands held, clueless and afraid. Astoria was glad that Rhiannon was somewhere safe, far away from here, but her presence would have steadied her anxiety. Flora rubbed Hestia’s shoulder when the silence pressed them a little too hard. Then, Professor Slughorn came tumbling into the room, heaving and unable to catch his breath.

“Oh, Hestia, m’girl! Good, you’re still up!” he assumed incorrectly of the girls. “Would you four please help me wake the students? We must go to the Great Hall at once.”

When he did not follow up with any more information, Astoria asked, “What are we to tell them?”

“Er…” Slughorn stalled, still out of breath as he waddled to the boys’ stairs. “Oh, er… is that you, Nott?”

Theodore came into view. He was almost unrecognisable. He had completely buzzed his hair. But Astoria would know his shying eyes anywhere.

“Tell them the Dark Lord is coming so they move. There isn’t time to let them argue with you,” Theodore said.

Astoria knew why he had cut his hair on such short notice. He was going to try to blend in with the soon-to-be crowd of students. He was not going to be spotted, and he was not going to join Voldemort. Astoria nodded at Theodore, and she set off with her friends.

“Er, Theodore, would you also help wake students? And round up our Prefects?” Professor Slughorn asked in exhaustion. “I’m going to project my voice, but it might not rouse everyone.”

“Absolutely. Did you see him, Professor?” Theodore asked urgently.

“See him! My dear boy, no, Heaven forbid! Not yet! We must move, though!”

Hestia Amplified her voice and sounded a lot like an Auror trying to train new recruits as she yelled everyone awake. The girls were grateful when Tracey Davis and Millicent Bulstrode came out of their dorm, even though it meant they had to encounter Pansy Parkinson. Tracey and Millicent, as a Prefect and Head Girl, respectively, were quite skilled in the art of herding students. Astoria studied the heads of the first years as they whimpered past her, but she did not see the oft-bullied Chesna Borgin or her companion Sedecla Burke. After weaving her way against the wave of people, she walked towards their dorm room and found Sedecla standing outside the door with her hands on her hips. Sedecla looked horrified to see Astoria and backed away.

“I tried to tell her to speed up, but she’s trying to catch her stupid toad!” Sedecla said.

“I’m not leaving Ramsay!” Chesna called from inside.

Carefully, Astoria opened the door and shut it behind her.

“Hi, Chesna. Can I teach you something really quick? Hold your wand out and say _Accio toad_. He is in your room for certain, right?”

“Oh, he’s in here! Erm… _Accio toad_.”

Out from somebody’s sheets came Ramsay, a fat little guy. He landed right in Chesna’s hands, and she put him in a pet carrier.

“That worked well!”

“Yes, let’s go now, okay?” Astoria said, and she hurried Chesna out of the room.

Sedecla was notably upset that Chesna was walking with Astoria.

“Come along, Sedecla. We need to get to the Great Hall quickly,” Astoria instructed.

“Don’t you know You-Know-Who?” Sedecla asked firmly.

Ah, Sedecla must have believed the dream Rabastan had given the unprotected students. Shame on Rabastan. This was not the conversation Astoria wanted to be having with an eleven-year-old when everyone’s life was on the line. Trying to control her irritation, Astoria said, “No, I do not. I know _about_ him.”

“I thought you were having a baby together.”

“Sedecla, stop it! If she was having a baby, she’d be all big in the stomach!” Chesna said. “That’s rude to say those things!”

“Well, we _saw_ her using Dark magic, remember? And ladies can Transfigure themselves to not look pregnant.”

“Yeah, but You-Know-Who’s old and weird!” Chesna said, getting to the root of the issue.

“He is very old and weird,” Astoria said with some amusement. “I am not having a baby, Sedecla. That was a dream put in your head by one of the Lestranges.”

“Why would he say you were having a baby?” Sedecla wondered, her actual belief of Astoria’s so-called pregnancy not nearly as strong as her flapping mouth.

“Well, he wanted to upset me, and he wanted other people not to like me. I hope that trick didn’t work on you, Sedecla,” Astoria said with a dramatic sigh.

“N-No, it didn’t work! I know a fake dream when I have one!” Sedecla said. “I just wanted to tease you, and it worked! You thought I was serious!”

“Well, let’s not tease others anymore. We have to focus on getting to safety now.”

The girls nodded and huddled close to Astoria. She met up with Flora and Hestia, who were at the tail end of Tracey’s group. They walked up to the Great Hall, the first of them nearly meeting the last of the Hufflepuffs. Astoria was amazed — all of the _real_ teachers were standing on the platform along with members of the resistance! Professor Lupin was right there, covered in even more scars than before. Astoria smiled at him as she passed, and despite the occasion, he nodded and smiled back.

Draco was nowhere to be seen, and it was nearly giving Astoria a stomach ulcer by this point. Both first-year girls wanted to sit next to Astoria, who tried to be a good example and not show too much fear. Flora and Hestia took the next seats down. The Great Hall was packed. Professor McGonagall was at the head of the group of teachers and members of the Order of the Phoenix. She addressed them with a serious, commanding voice:-

“You-Know-Who is approaching Hogwarts with the intent to attack. We are going to evacuate everyone from here, up the marble staircase, and into a secret chamber you are to follow through. From what I understand, this chamber and the evacuation point is a bit narrow, so don’t hit your head, and do not panic. Teachers _will_ charm you back in place if you start bunching together, mind you. The evacuation will be overseen by Mr Filch and Madam Pomfrey. Prefects, when I give the word, you will organise your House and take your charges, _in an orderly fashion_ , to the evacuation point.”

From the Hufflepuff table, a boy stood up to ask a question. Astoria recognised him as Ernie Macmillan, who had studied with her for the Astronomy O.W.L. but did not continue the class.

“And what if we want to stay and fight?” he asked, and his friends cheered him on.

“If you are of age, you may stay,” Professor McGonagall replied.

A young Ravenclaw called out worriedly, “What about our things? Our trunks, our owls?”

“We have no time to collect possessions. The important thing is to get you out of here safely,” Professor McGonagall said firmly.

“Pets are more than possessions,” Chesna mumbled next to Astoria, waving her finger at her toad through the glass.

“Yes, I’m very glad we have Ramsay with us. That was a neat spell you used, Chesna,” Sedecla said, finally realising the situation.

Astoria found Professor Sinistra standing next to Professor Grubbly-Plank, who had been filling in for Professor Hagrid. But there was one key figure missing from her repeated scans of the staff group.

“Where’s Professor Snape?” Astoria shouted, since Snape’s location was very likely to be Draco’s.

“He has, to use a common phrase, done a bunk,” answered Professor McGonagall.

All the other three tables cheered, but that wasn’t as good as everyone thought it was. Snape was what stood between Voldemort and the students. And if Snape left, where was Draco? Was he really going to be fighting the Order of the Phoenix?

McGonagall told the students about the protections round the castle, and more importantly, how they would not hold against all Death Eaters at once. Astoria, along with many others, spotted Harry Potter moving between the tables. So, whoever had captured Harry had already botched the job. Was Draco already killed? Is that why Snape legged it — he knew he would be killed like Draco? Astoria nearly started crying, but she had no proof that was what happened, and the children would see…

It seemed to be ages since she had seen Harry Potter in person; he looked more beat up than he did in the newspaper photos. Astoria had refused to read a newspaper since her family had been attacked. There was something disturbingly familiar about the wand Potter had, but with so many heads bobbing in her line of sight, she could not figure out what was odd about it. She wondered what had led him to come back to school, and how he had got away from the patrolling Death Eaters. They weren’t skulking round anymore, so they must all have had to report to Voldemort.

The moment she thought the forbidden name, a horrible voice started echoing against every surface in the castle. It was Voldemort himself, addressing them as though he could _see_ into the castle. The little ones screamed as he talked.

“I know that you are preparing to fight. Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood. Give me Harry Potter, and none shall be harmed. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter, and you will be rewarded. You have until midnight.”

Everyone was dead silent, horrified of the noise and of the wizard it came from. Harry, the fugitive in question, stood with his mouth open, as though everyone would suddenly change their minds about Voldemort and move to grab him. Only one such person made that idea known. Pansy Parkinson, who was in a sweating panic, jumped up and said:-

“But he’s there! Potter’s _there_! Someone grab him!”

Astoria gasped as it seemed people obeyed Parkinson’s request, but they all stood to defend Potter, not harm him.

“Thank you, Miss Parkinson. You will leave the Hall first with Mr Filch. If the rest of your House could follow,” Professor McGonagall said exasperatedly.

Theodore and Millicent stood and waved the far side of the table first towards Mr Filch, then Astoria’s side. She felt the small, wet hand of Sedecla sneak into hers. Chesna held her pet carrier close to her chest.

“Ravenclaws, follow on!”

Astoria could no longer see Professor Sinistra over the heads of tall boys. Would she come this way? Would she evacuate? Would she fight? Why had Astoria chosen to ask McGonagall about Snape when Professor Sinistra was _right back there_ , beyond the line of heads…?

Alexa spoke up and asked round if Amycus and Alecto were still in the castle. Professor Flitwick, who was close behind them with the Ravenclaw group, said, “No, they are trapped in my common room and without wands. Professor McGonagall has already seen to them!”

He then separated from the line of evacuees, and waited for overage fighters to follow him. With all of the Ravenclaws, Astoria couldn’t change course to get to Professor Sinistra, so she simply made sure that Flora and Hestia were still behind her, and walked up the steps. They were being led quite high up, and down a dark corridor, to an opening Astoria had never seen before. Astoria assumed it was a room that had been moved with dimensional magic, but fortunately, she did not step into crushing blackness upon crossing the threshold. On the contrary, it looked like there was a camp set up in there. Banners from every House except hers hung on the walls, and there were hammocks and food everywhere. The rough furnishings and the lack of any Slytherin representation told Astoria that it must have been a hideout of the Dumbledore’s Army kids. Mr Filch yelled at the students as they started doing exactly what Professor McGonagall had said not to — bunching together. Eventually, with Theodore’s clear directions and Millicent’s very loud voice, students started neatly filing towards an opening in the wall.

“Light you wands, now, it’s dark down there!” Theodore said. “That’s it, we can do four at a time. One — two — three — four! Wait till we can’t see their wand lights. Okay, go! One — two — three — four!”

“EVERYONE GET IN THE DAMN LINE!” Millicent had to say for the eighth time.

Tracey Davis and Maxwell Lazenby ran alongside the edge of the students, straightening their line and running their arms to space each set of four. Sedecla squeezed Astoria’s hand, afraid that she wouldn’t be in her group of four, and Astoria squeezed Sedecla’s sweaty little hand back.

“Astoria,” Flora said darkly. “We are staying behind.”

“ _What_?”

Flora spoke fast, as the students were moving quickly, and they were nearly to the evacuation point.

“Listen, I don’t care what Flitwick says. If Amycus and Alecto are _inside_ the castle, they pose the worst kind of threat. They’ve clearly been left unattended. Hestia and I are going after them.”

“Flora, no!” Astoria protested. “He said they’re wandless. I think even Imperiused…”

“You think it’s impossible to slip them a wand? Or to fight off the Imperius Curse?” Hestia scoffed. “Animagi amongst the Death Eaters can get in.”

“McGonagall said they set up protections,” Astoria said stupidly, trying to get the twins safely through the evacuation.

“Oh, like Dark magic can’t shred those! Astoria, listen. We’re going to fight. We’re going to fight for the Order,” Flora said.

“You’re not of age! She said only if you were of age!”

“When’s the last time we listened to anything McGonagall said?” Hestia said. “We wanted you to know where we were. Be safe, Astoria.”

And the twins broke out of the line, weaving their way unnoticed through hammocks, tapestries, and luggage. Astoria’s mouth dried. She was only a few groups away from the exit, with the first-years and Alexa. She let go of Sedecla’s hand and patted the girls on the back, handing them off to Alexa. And for once, Alexa had no intrusive question. The younger girls protested Astoria’s departure, but were soon seen through the exit. Theodore, though, lost his cool when he saw Astoria walking the other way and tried to get her to stop.

“Astoria, no! You have to evacuate! You’re underage!”

“I’m of age! My birthday was in January!” Astoria lied securely.

“Yeah, your sixteenth! Weren’t you advanced a year?”

“I just turned seventeen, Theodore, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“ASTORIA, STOP!”

Theodore couldn’t move from his post.

“DRACO WILL HAVE MY HEAD IF I DON’T GET YOU OUT!”

Astoria absconded from the gawking crowd, shoving hammocks out of her face, shouting for the twins. She had not lost them yet, since they were unable to get out the way they had come in. Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs came traipsing through, and there were young Gryffindors down the hall. The twins stood in the shadows behind some boxes, watching the queue carefully. Astoria came up behind them.

“You’re not of age, Astoria, go back,” Hestia said.

“You’re not of age, either!” Astoria hissed.

“Well, we turn seventeen in June, so hush up and get back in the queue.”

“Let her come, Hestia,” Flora said. “She wants to. Nobody’s made her.”

“I don’t want Amycus and Alecto hurting her anymore!” Hestia cried out.

“We may need her if they’re already free. Don’t you get it? We’re doing this alone! We may be fighting for the Order, but we don’t have any Order members with us!” Flora said. “Astoria duels to win.”

Shapes of people who were now dead came to Astoria’s mind without invitation. _It’s not easy_ , she wanted to tell Flora. _It’s not easy to do it, Flora. It’s very hard_. She thought of Ginny’s silence, out on the grounds, standing aside two bodies. _It’s a very bad feeling to do it, Flora_. The heat from her Fiendfyre seemed to get under the pyjamas she wore now. She had absolutely no way of ever knowing how many of the approaching enemy had got caught in the inferno she had made before the holiday. What a bad curse. What a bad thing.

Astoria looked down at herself. They had all had plenty enough time to change into real clothes, and they had been so high-strung that they hadn’t. They had just stood in the common room with a pyjama-and-boots combination. It all seemed like time wasted now.

“This isn’t working,” Flora grumbled. “By the time these kids get through, Amycus and Alecto could have their round-trip holiday to Turks and Caicos.”

“They might still be stuck,” Hestia said optimistically. “It _was_ McGonagall, after all.”

“Yeah, but if we stay here till the end of the queue, Pomfrey and Filch will notice we’re sneaking back.”

Astoria spoke up, “We’ll use the Disillusionment Charm now, and Levitate each other over the crowd. But you have to do this on me first, so that I know you’re not leaving me behind.”

“How will we reach the last person, then?” Hestia asked.

Flora made a stool invisible and sent it over everyone’s heads. They all took a dip in a chilly Disillusionment.

“We’ll stand on that to reach you, Hestia.”

“WHY AM I LAST?”

“Because I’m not,” Flora said, and Astoria felt her invisible feet leave the ground.

She floated over the students’ heads and landed gently in the corridor. She bumped into an invisible Flora not long after whilst she was groping the stool into place. Flora stood up on it and aimed right at where Hestia should be standing (it was hard to aim at something invisible). A few students looked toward Hestia as she floated over, either seeing her shadow or feeling some disturbance of the air, but nothing happened. The three girls ran down the corridor and started making their way towards Ravenclaw Tower.

“What if they aren’t there? They’ll try to catch students as they’re evacuating! Take them prisoner!” Hestia asked, changing her optimistic outlook.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Flora sighed.

They were covering a lot of ground for having no sleep. The adrenaline rush was amazing.

“I’m going to undo the charm on myself to see my Foe-Shard,” Hestia said as they entered the tower. “Oh, no, I can’t see them in the glass!”

Astoria could picture how Flora’s face must look at that news.

“Wait! Wait!” Hestia piped. “They’re showing up now! As we’re getting higher!”

Above them, the girls could hear Flitwick and his reinforcements marching to the top of the tower. Could they be walking into a trap? Shouldn’t Astoria shout and warn everyone? Flora stopped on a landing whilst Flitwick and his allies continued stomping on above.

“This is the common room. This is where they are.”

“Yes,” Hestia confirmed with her Foe-Shard.

“Conceal yourself again, Hestia,” Flora said.

Hestia nodded and all but disappeared against the castle wall. Astoria drew a few deep breaths and raised her wand. She startled at a voice, but it was the talking door-knocker, whose riddle about ink she had not been able to answer two years prior. It had been Flora who solved that riddle.

“How does a Runespoor argue?” asked the golden eagle perched on the common room door.

“Till only one is left,” Flora said, but nothing happened.

She furrowed her brow and guessed again, “Survival of the fittest.”

Nothing.

“I don’t get the riddle,” Flora said anxiously.

“That’s a riddle? That sounds more like a question to me,” Astoria said. “What do we know about Runespoor behaviour?”

“No, no. It’s a riddle. _The Ravenclaw riddle_. It’s not a literal answer,” Flora fumed.

The girls fell silent. Their enemies were only a door away.

“How does a Runespoor argue?” the eagle sang when Hestia wedged her way through her invisible allies.

“Unproductively, since it hurts its own, and therefore hurts itself,” Hestia said.

“Well reasoned,” the eagle said, and the door opened before them.

Alecto and Amycus were not immediately visible, but another wizard was standing in the centre of the blue-spangled common room, pointing his wand at the ceiling. Astoria followed the line of his casting. Alecto and Amycus were bound together on the ceiling, held in a shimmering magical net. From the Clock Tower, a toll came to signal midnight and the last of Voldemort’s patience. Hestia kicked up wind as she ran forward, but Astoria heard Flora tackle her to the ground, and the rug rolled beneath them.

“DAD!” Hestia shouted. “ _DAD_!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"The amphisbaena has a twin head, that is, one at the tail end as well, as though it were not enough for poison to be poured out of one mouth."_ \- Pliny the Elder


	26. The House of Carrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"What do they long for, as I long for,—  
>  Starting up in my inland bed,  
> Beating the narrow walls, and finding  
> Neither a window nor a door,  
> Screaming to God for death by drowning,—  
> One salt taste of the sea once more?"_  
> \- "Inland," Edna St. Vincent Millay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 26 - "The Waves Have Come" by Chelsea Wolfe
> 
> **Content warnings: more-than-canon-typical blood, enmeshment trauma, suicidal thoughts, suicide**
> 
> me: don't do House of Usher, don't do House of Usher, don't--  
> also me:

Alecto wriggled in McGonagall’s net like an aggressive species in some unlucky ethologist’s trap. She spotted where the rug had been disturbed and quickly figured out that her nieces were invisible. Astoria stood perfectly still. Alecto didn’t know she was there yet. Once Hestia stopped screaming for her father, it became clear that the situation was not in their favour.

“Aban, look at me! ABAN! Look at your sister! _Get us down_!” Alecto shouted.

Aban Carrow, Flora and Hestia’s father, looked heavily Imperiused. He had been looking round in response to Hestia’s calls, but not as a father would. His search had been mere curiosity. It didn’t make sense how he could be Imperiused with both of his older siblings wandless, yet he looked back up and moved his wand again to aid them…

“ _Expelliarmus_!” Flora shouted from a new corner.

Aban’s wand flipped out of his hand and out of sight. All three girls dove to find it. But Flora had not been quick enough to Disarm him. Aban had already unwoven McGonagall’s spell enough to cut the magical net that bound the fiends.

The net gave way on one side only, allowing Alecto to swing like a trapeze artist. She was still bound to an unconscious Amycus with silvery rope, but she used this to her advantage, with all her limbs free during descent. She moved their combined weight with net’s fast momentum, making her an impossible target for Flora’s and Hestia’s curses.

As the net swung to the wall, Alecto kicked off against the stone and landed on a couch, with Amycus’s head bobbing uselessly against her shoulder. Alecto had no intention of using him as a human shield, though, and instantly sprang back up.

Though invisible, Astoria and the girls had left quite a trail of messed rugs and furniture as they ransacked the common room for Aban’s wand. Hestia said, “ _Accio wand_ ” for good measure, but like any good wand, it had an Anti-Theft Charm imbued in it. Essentially their enemy, Aban searched for his wand as well. Astoria took the liberty to lock Aban’s legs, but in the interim, Alecto dove sideways to the floor. Even whilst encumbered with her twin, Alecto had been sharp enough to find Aban’s wand. She was now armed.

In no time at all, Amycus was awake and detached. Like Aban, though, he did not seem himself. Under fire, Alecto cast a glaringly bright Shield round herself and Amycus. She left Aban defenceless — a combination of knowing the girls would not hurt their own father and a lack of care.

“Amycus, how silly, you’re Imperiused,” Alecto giggled as though the triad of curses trying to crack her Shield were mere snowballs.

“Am, you dolt. Come out of it already!”

Amycus did not come out of it; in flashes of light from her curses, Astoria saw his face inexpressive and glassy-eyed.

“Bad one, eh?” Alecto sighed. “Come on, Amycus. Snap out of it. It’s Allie.”

Alecto poked him in the gut. He startled into consciousness, which was great for Alecto and bad for everyone else.

“That filthy old hag!” Amycus declared of Professor McGonagall. “I’ll kill her, Alecto, I swear— Fuck! _Potter_ , he’s gone! D’you have _any_ idea what a stink you’ve caused‽”

“I do, I do,” said Alecto, trying to play the part of the calm one, which was far from the truth. The Carrows’ mountainous level of strain made them all the more frightening.

“Potter was just here!” Amycus insisted, having lost his concept of time. “In here, just like you signalled, Allie! He was invisible, the coward! He Cruciated me, and—”

“Then I will kill him myself,” Alecto intercalated coldly.

“The Dark Lord says Potter’s gotta be brought to him alive! You know that, Alecto!”

“How could I not? It’s been _years_! Years of nothing but this boy! I’m sick of it. _I’ll_ kill Potter, and the Dark Lord can just keep his body to make sure it rots dead!” Alecto shouted, unhinging.

Her rage at Potter rubbed off on Amycus’s anger at McGonagall. He spun round in exasperation but had nowhere to go due to Alecto’s Shield protecting him from Hestia’s fiery comets.

“Minerva, that bloody old shrew! Damn it! This _all_ coulda been over! Merlin, I’m sorry I wasn’t out of it sooner, Allie! I played dumb so she’d miss the threat, and we’d get Potter from under her nose, and _the bitch got away_ —”

“If you’d not played dumb, she’d have set a much stronger Imperius in you,” Alecto noted. “We gotta deal with the situation at hand first, right? It’s personal…”

“Like sweet, red hell it is,” Amycus growled, viewing his nieces’ magic against him. “Finally decided to come out, have you, Hestia? Flora? Sounds like you two’ve brought the Greengrass somewhere, too. Real interesting how you’d let us _all_ die, actin’ this way at a time like this! You know how important this is to our family! Flora, I’m disappointed in you most of all.”

“Then I must be doing something right for once,” Flora spat, and her next curse shattered the elder twins’ Shield at last.

With magical strength, Alecto instantly wrenched Amycus behind her. She pelted foggy curses, released Aban from the leg-lock, and sneaked out a Revealing Spell. Astoria saw her hands again and knew she had been hit. When Flora came into view, she was laying motionless on the ground.

“ _FLORA_!”

Amycus grabbed Flora’s wand and kicked her in the face, right in the same spot Alecto’s face had been scalded with Fiendfyre heat.

“ _STUPEFY_!” Hestia cast right at Amycus’s head, but he bent just in time, and a vase atop the Ravenclaw fireplace busted. The glass hit Flora, causing Hestia to cry.

Astoria did not understand how Aban was Imperiused in the first place if the Carrows had been wandless. Some other Death Eater must have Imperiused him to go help the Carrows, but how did Aban get into the castle? Were more Death Eaters already here? Was this all for nothing?

Aban was wandless, but he had a knife, and he came after Astoria.

“ _DEPULSO_!” she shouted, and he flew backwards.

His knife went everywhere in the air. It could land on Flora. One step ahead, Hestia shouted, “ _ACCIO KNIFE_!” and quickly set an Anti-Summoning Charm on it, stuffing it into her pocket as Amycus fired colourless curses at her.

The room was so small for a battle that it was impossible not to crash into things. Alecto parried every spell Astoria fired, so Astoria gave up on casting directly and Levitated a heavy chair in the air, throwing it on Alecto. Amycus Reducted the chair mid-air and tried to kill Astoria with the same spell. Astoria screamed at the magic coming her way, and it busted a wall so hard it vibrated through the floor.

“Why didn’t you just kill me in class if you’re gonna try now‽” Astoria shouted at him. “We didn’t come here to fight to the death, Amycus!”

“I said it before, you little rat. Snape said no dead students. But he’s gone and scarpered. I’m Headmaster in his absence,” Amycus jeered. “Aban, _now_.”

Aban grabbed Hestia from behind and held her in place, an easy target for the elder siblings. The sight enraged Astoria, and she had to focus hard to cast a Shield over both Aban and Hestia instead of something at Aban’s skull. It was so easy to harm an immediate threat, and so dreadful a task to save one. The Imperius Curse could be _fought off_ , and Aban could not even do that to save his own children! Astoria was so angry that she barely missed the three curses zipping next to her.

 _Three_?

Hestia screamed from behind Astoria’s Shield. Her father had begun to strangle her, and her sister was now Imperiused, a huge mark from Amycus’s boot still on her face.

Flora was wandless like Aban, but she was not without magic. As Astoria struggled across the sea of damaged furniture in the circular room, Alecto etched spells from across the room, lighting up Flora’s hands and arms with isotoxal decagrams and thick written script. Astoria didn’t know what to do — the body-modification curses in the Dark Arts books she had studied made her uncomfortable, and now she was facing one. She remembered how Adamina had been turned into a live bomb and could only hope the same would not be true for Flora as Astoria released her Shield to get to Hestia.

“ _Somnodurus_!” Astoria cast between Aban’s eyes, and he fell backwards.

Hestia’s white face flooded pink again, and she sent a broken bust of some long-forgotten professor at Alecto. Again, Amycus intercepted it perfectly with a Reductor Curse. The girls couldn’t figure out what to do with Flora, whose arms were now covered in glowing white symbols. She had been loaded with Dark magic. Astoria pushed Hestia over a couch accidentally to get her out of the line of fire. Right from her hands, Flora hit Astoria with a Gouging Spell, and she fell in pain. Another moment was lost.

“HANDS UP, OR FLORA KILLS DADDY!” Amycus said from nowhere.

The whole room changed under the weight of Amycus’s words, and all the chaos turned to quiet. As Astoria clutched her bleeding wound, Hestia emerged from the couch with her hands held high, her wand rolling across the floor. Astoria wheeled round on her knees and saw Flora’s dangerous, glowing hands above Aban’s sleeping head. Hestia pleaded at rapid speed, “Please, Astoria, drop your wand. My dad. Please. My dad.”

Astoria let go of her wand resentfully and watched Amycus pick it out of her own splatters of blood on the floor. He used the wand he had stolen from Flora to Cruciate her, and Astoria lost track of everything except the pain. When she came to, it was not Amycus with Flora’s wand in her face, but rather Alecto with Astoria’s.

“Wake Aban and give him his wand back,” Alecto instructed Amycus, holding the cherry wand beneath Astoria’s chin. “I much prefer Astoria’s own wand to kill her.”

A simple Killing Curse would have spared Astoria the pain, but it would not fall in line with Alecto’s vendetta against the world. A bad curse, a _warm-up_ , fizzed on Astoria’s face, and she cried onto the hands that held her.

“You bleat like a little lamb, Astoria,” Alecto sighed. “Just like I remember. Oh, I’ll miss all our fun together, but you’re a failed experiment. I tried so hard and thought you’d changed. You made me feel right special when you wondered why I’d left you to Lestrange. You looked so betrayed it’s almost like you loved me.”

 _Loved you_? _Loved you_?

“But you _lied_ to me, Astoria. You’re a blood-traitor and a blasphemer. It’s a shame things have to end this way for us. Maybe in the next life we’ll be friends, eh? But for now, I’ll bring the Lestranges your head on a plate.”

Hestia was fighting like crazy as the Carrow brothers cursed her, though she was much weaker than Astoria had last seen her, and she was losing. Astoria swung a fist for her life, but Alecto caught it and hoisted her by the wrist. Astoria kicked and kicked, but Alecto was magically stronger. Hestia screamed somewhere behind her, getting cursed out of her wits by her uncle, father, and sister. Yet none of Flitwick’s forces above could hear her; whatever battle was happening between the Order and the assault on Hogwarts, it was shaking the tower. The windows suddenly all shattered, and the floor cracked like Alecto and Amycus’s reasoning as Hestia stopped slapping helplessly with her bare hands and started slitting Amycus with the knife she carried. Fresh blood beaded out of his face and arms, and he went so blind with rage that he pocketed his wand and started thrashing Hestia to a pulp with vein-popped fists.

“THIS IS WHAT YOU DO TO ME, HESTIA‽ TO _ME_ ‽ AFTER I FED YOU, CLOTHED YOU, AND TAUGHT YOU EVERYTHING‽ _YOU_ — _MANKY_ — _FUCKING —_ _FREAK_!”

Hestia’s knife dropped out of her hand and her bloodied face became increasingly unrecognisable. Parts of her face would break the way Amycus beat her.

Astoria’s kicks did nothing, but Alecto suddenly threw Astoria down and screamed to her twin in tears. Amycus wouldn’t stop on his own, but he would obey Alecto’s commandment. For one last moment, Astoria hoped something better for Alecto, a mere essence of goodness.

Astoria exhaled too soon.

Alecto’s cries had nothing to do with Hestia’s welfare. Rather, she had spotted a dangerous cut on Amycus’s neck that he had yet to notice. It was the first time Astoria had seen Alecto use healing magic and likely the only time she ever would. Amycus’s wounds began to close; he paused his demolition of Hestia to press his hand against the lifesaving magic in his arteries. Alecto was not trying to stop Amycus at all. She called out to justify and support him, maybe even _help_ him.

“If Hestia’s taking arms against us, she’ll take arms against our superiors, Am! We can’t keep this up anymore — we’ve already tested his patience! If she gets out acting like this, we’ll _all_ die! W-We’ve done all we could! She’s nothin’ but a Mud-licking disgrace! I know she is! Sh-Sh-She’s unclean!” Alecto shook out in sobs, saying it without saying it.

Amycus now viewed Hestia’s defiance of Voldemort as a danger to Alecto’s life. He swooped one arm to the floor to grab the knife Hestia had taken against him, as if beating her to death too slow to appease his feeling of pungent betrayal.

 _He’ll kill Hestia_.

Astoria stumbled upward and tried to get the crushed Hestia out of the grip of the Carrow brothers, but Flora hit her with a terrible curse from her magic-infused arms. It felt like huge needles were sewing their way through her spine, and she fell again, splintering her hands on the busted, sloped floor. Uncle Faunus’s pipe cracked in her robes under her knee.

 _Hestia_ , _please hold on_ , _please don’t die_.

Astoria slapped her hand on the broken floor to get back up and felt something else. _Hestia_ ’ _s_ _wand_.

Even if just one small, key artery is cut, the whole animal will die in minutes…

Astoria was sorry to put it out of its misery, but she was not sorry enough to let her friends become devoured prey. She was not sorry enough for the spell to fail. She felt it bubbling up from her stomach, turning to pins and needles in her fingertips. From the ground, Astoria did what she could do, fully knowing it could be the last thing she ever did.

“ _Avada Kedavra_.”

Amycus dropped, and Alecto screamed with a sound incomparable to anything in the natural world, as if Astoria was forced to hear the parting soul pass through the body still standing. Astoria had to roll, clamber, and dive away from the Killing Curses now firing from Alecto. Green flames lit up the furniture, and the smoke put off a bizarre, heavy smell of brine.

Shamefully Imperiused, Aban tried to lift Hestia’s unconscious body out from under Amycus’s corpse in order to put her in firing range, but he was frailer than his older brother. His marionette arms were weak from underuse. Astoria had no time to aim anything at Aban. Alecto was sending Killing Curses at her like hail from sky to abyss. She started mispronouncing the spell once the snot clogged her voice. In the split-second lull whilst Alecto blew her nose in her sleeve to clear her speaking ability, Astoria aimed to deliver the _coup de grâce_ , but Flora was too close behind the woman…

“ _AVADA KEDAVRA_!” Alecto shouted with her wand in a new direction. The curse went right over Hestia, who had merely opened her swollen eyes. The first and the only thing the injured Hestia did was scream for her sister.

Then something extraordinary happened. Flora leapt onto Alecto’s back and snatched Astoria’s wand out of her stubby hands.

“ _You’ve hurt my sister for the last time_ ,” Flora said, and she placed her curse-armed hand onto Alecto’s face.

Alecto’s cries of pain were the only hint of the level of magic Flora had been carrying in her body. She broke away from Flora, holding her face.

“THAT’S WHAT YOU WANTED ME TO DO TO THEM!” Flora screamed as Alecto stumbled, oozing blood. “YOU’D _KILL_ THEM TO KEEP THE DARK LORD HAPPY! _HAVE A TASTE OF YOUR OWN SPELL, SICKO_!”

Alecto kept wailing, blindly stumbling, with blood going all over the blue and bronze decorations. Flora blasted Astoria’s wand at the window, but nothing happened. Flora tried again and succeeded, animating the curtains to tie like pythons round her father and threw him aside to the floor, away from Hestia. The castle trembled terribly from a battle that was not yet theirs.

“ _Am_ , _Amycus_ ,” Alecto wailed. “ _Amycus_!”

“HE’S DEAD AS DIRT!” Flora screamed. “HE’S WAITING FOR YOU IN HELL!”

“ _Am_ , _Am_ ,” Alecto called in deluded pain, “It’s me. Amycus, please wake up. _It’s Allie_. Please come back. The Dark Lord! _The Dark Lord_ … Amycus, please! _TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE!_ _WE PROMISED, AMYCUS!_ _DON’T GO WITHOUT ME! PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME_! _WE PROMISED_!”

Alecto’s desperate pleas rang out in conjunction with her searing pain. The wounds erupting from Alecto were so terrible that Astoria was glad the room was smoky and poorly lit. But Alecto would use the girls’ own father as a weapon to kill Hestia. Alecto was not salvageable.

She landed on Amycus, bleeding all over him, and she shook him even though he was more than several minutes gone. The castle shook in time with his corpse, with rubble hitting the floor in dusty trails. Flora’s wand was on Amycus somewhere, and Astoria could no longer be a spectator of Flora’s curse-casting.

Astoria and Alecto raised wands they did not own in each other’s faces. But Astoria couldn’t cast a spell even if it were Heimliched out of her. And Alecto, the unceasing Fury, had completely given up.

Alecto lowered her wand away from Astoria and towards her free hand. Astoria, however, didn’t dare lower her wand despite Alecto’s apparent defeat. She watched the Dark witch with bated breath.

“ _Emmeno_ ,” Alecto wept into her palm before resting it where Amycus’s pulse had once beat in his neck.

 _A Permanent Sticking Charm… to a corpse?_ Astoria cringed.

But then her senses clicked into place. The anathema in Alecto’s eyes made them very different from Flora and Hestia’s, but they had the same shade, and Astoria suddenly drowned in them. If she wasn’t mistaken, she had been invited. Perhaps begged.

In the front of Alecto’s grubby brain, the death of Amycus played again and again like an avalanche. Alecto had been the one to call You-Know-Who and bore the responsibility of Harry Potter getting away from her, a crime for which there was no hope of forgiveness. Further in, Astoria uncovered that Aban had been under the Imperius Curse for the twins’ _entire_ lives, with Alecto and Amycus merely trading off the spell.

Aban had been ordered by Alecto to come to the castle last night after Flora and Hestia Cruciated Amycus in class. Alecto had planned to use their own father against them in some evil way before the order came down from Voldemort for her to stay in Ravenclaw Tower. Nevertheless, Aban had been tripled with Imperius curses rather than his usual one. Amycus and Alecto both lost their wands to McGonagall, but patrolling Death Eater Selwyn had not. Therefore, Aban was working according to Selwyn’s curse, but his orders included obeying any Death Eater.

In deeper corners of Alecto’s conscious, Astoria exhumed many things she did not want to see and mentally elbowed her way through it. She knew Alecto had manipulated, controlled, and abused her nieces for years and years. What she didn’t know was that Mabily Blodwyn, the twins’ mother, had not died and left the Carrow family with the burden of more mouths to feed — she had been _murdered_.

Alecto and Amycus had set curses into Mabily so she would not survive giving birth, and they could raise her girls how they wanted. Mabily, though pure-blood, was not a witch of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, nor was she a blood supremacist. Above all, Mabily had rejected the House of Carrow. Anticipating further rejection, Alecto and Amycus had taken the simplest of cries from their infant nieces personally from day one. By conflating love with ownership, they created a self-fulfilling prophecy of resentment, and they had never won their nieces’ admiration.

Astoria felt like the ground she stood on was tipping as she sank further in Alecto’s mind. There was nowhere else for her to go except over the edge of a dreary memory…

> _Mum taught — no. Mum made me learn how to read when I was small, saying “You ain’t pretty, but you ain’t gonna be stupid on top of it.” I caught on and learnt to read. Amycus couldn’t because he was afraid of her. So I taught him once I knew how._
> 
> _“Mum’s dead wrong about you,” he told me._
> 
> _“Dad’s dead wrong about you,” I said._
> 
> _Other kids at Durmstrang got homesick. We usually tried to avoid going home. This time we don’t get a choice. We can’t go back. We can’t possibly go home, either._
> 
> _The sun sets on our long ship ride. I point out the brilliant colours and move my head away from the window so Amycus can see. He looks out the window peacefully, like we didn’t just have the conversation we just had._
> 
> _We don’t want to die on our parents’ terms. We can die on our own without their input. So when there’s no more sunset, we step out to the ship’s deck, our minds made up._
> 
> _“It’s really cold,” I remark, like we’re going for a stroll instead of out to die. And like it’s gonna matter, Amycus gives me his coat right then and there, trying to big-brother me. I laugh at him. He laughs at himself._
> 
> _We pile on the Sticking Charms once we’re at the edge. Our luggage goes to our legs like anchors. Our wands adhere vertically between our chests like funeral flowers. Our arms lock with magic so the ocean’s tides can’t deposit us on separate sands._
> 
> _It’s hard to tell the hiss of the wind from the crash of the waves. It’s late at night, so it’s hard to tell the sea from the sky, too. Nobody will see us. It will be fine._
> 
> _Just as I reassure myself, two yellow lights start sweeping across the deck, searching. Of course, right? Of course._
> 
> _The yellow lights just miss us. Must have been the ship’s lookout. Amycus gives me an ironic smile._
> 
> _“I’ll sink this whole ship if someone fucks with us.”_
> 
> _“That’d give Mum and Dad the satisfaction of knowing we were mad.”_
> 
> _“They ain’t gonna cry either way, Alliecat.”_
> 
> _I shut my stinging eyes because he’s right. They won’t. They’ll be glad we’re not their problem anymore. They didn’t have to beat it into us, but they did — they’ve said it themselves. Over and over and over: they didn’t want us, it’s just what you have to do._
> 
> _I start wondering how long we’re gonna stand here, but I refuse to be the one who moves first. I can only do this because it’s our joint idea. But if I start it, he’ll follow my lead, and that’d be like me killing him. He’s thinking the same thing, ‘It can’t be me. It can’t be me.’ We have to do this together._
> 
> _“Well, this was lousy,” Amycus remarks about our luckless fifteen years._
> 
> _I almost laugh, “Yeah.”_
> 
> _“I got big plans for the next life, though.”_
> 
> _“You do?”_
> 
> _“M-hm. Big plans.”_
> 
> _I haven’t fantasised much beyond hitting the water and escaping all of this. I try to imagine a better world. I’m not too creative, I guess. I ask him what his big plans are. He tells me._
> 
> _And as he tells me, I can picture it beneath these waves. It’s even better than the bedtime storybooks I nicked from shops to read for him when we were children. Because back then he couldn’t. And our parents wouldn’t. Storybook endings are something only others get to have. But he tells me it’s down there for us, too._
> 
> **_It’s still there, Amycus! Astoria’s not your murderer… she’s_ our _psychopomp! Right? The Dark Lord would kill us if she’d not come for us! See? See? Everything’s still there for us, away from him! Away from everybody!_**
> 
> _As Amycus narrates our next life in full-colour, I don’t even feel that cold, wet wind anymore. We_ will _have it all. It’s just not up here. This was all just a cruel test we couldn’t pass._
> 
> _“Are you scared, Alecto?”_
> 
> **_Am I scared now, Amycus?_ **
> 
> _I squeeze his hand._
> 
> _“How could I be?”_
> 
> **_How could I be?_ **
> 
> _We sink into the North Sea in the frozen dead of winter. But the water is bath-warm…_

Alecto’s whole mind capsized, and as Astoria shook free, she could swear that Alecto’s eyes had already begun to cloud.

“It’ll be all right now, Amycus,” Alecto panted, on the brink of shock from the blood loss. “ _Avada Kedavra_.”

Alecto fell upon her brother, not unlike how the trio had found her, and the castle shook more rubble on top of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"The amphisbaena grows twin heads, one in the proper place, and the other where the tail should be. For this reason the snake glides in a circular shape, as the heads, contrary to what is right, strain from both ends."_ \- Solinus


	27. The Dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 27 - "Over the Love" by Florence + the Machine

Astoria’s knees buckled and her whole body shook. The glowing marks etched into Flora’s arms flickered and disappeared, and the green flames from Alecto’s misaimed Killing Curses extinguished into more dense, brackish, smoke. Coughing, Flora ran over to Hestia, who was bleeding, and Aban, who was still stuck in the curtains.

“F-Flora, he’s still Imperiused! By Sel-Selwyn,” Astoria remembered to report, as Flora had not been in Alecto’s head.

Flora grumbled, “All right. What was that spell? _Somnodurus_.”

Nothing happened when Flora cast it. Aban was still struggling in the curtain, trying to make a foe of himself again.

“Give me Hestia’s wand and take _this thing_ back — it’s awful,” Flora said, tossing Astoria’s wand to her.

Although her hands trembled cold, Astoria didn’t feel anything wrong with her own wand, thankfully. It was a bit power-hungry and full of personality, but overall tamed. Hestia’s wand worked perfectly for Flora, and their father was back asleep. With the immediate danger gone, Flora then dove on Hestia to heal her mangled face. Hestia had a fractured jaw and broken nose, and Flora worked quickly to correct it. Once she could see out of her eyes again, Hestia looked at the bodies of Alecto and Amycus, who were not family.

Flora gave Hestia’s wand back to her and went to retrieve her own from Alecto’s dead hand. Hestia and Astoria stood quietly in place. Flora wrenched her wand free and wiped it off on Alecto’s clothes.

“Well, now, everyone has their own magic stick again,” Flora said. “Hestia, I am so sorry that I—”

“You fought it off,” Hestia gushed. “You fought it off, Flora!”

Astoria was presently trying to fight off her unwanted crying. The tattoo upon Alecto’s neck had ceased its writhing, though like its permanent ink, her hand stuck to Amycus’s neck. Her tangled hair veiled his dead face, and her bleeding began to slow due to the lack of her heartbeat. The wind came in from a shattered window with the wrong sound, the sound of the sea. Its cold embrace seemed to mist Astoria’s shoulders, but when she brushed them, they were dry. Flora returned to her side.

“Your face is injured. May I?”

Astoria just nodded, trying not to collapse. Flora chanted something for Astoria’s sake; it seemed like she intended to take care of herself last. Astoria’s face felt much better after Flora’s spells, but Flora’s expression progressively looked worse as reality set in.

“I killed my aunt,” she scarcely whispered. “I’ve just killed my aunt.”

Astoria took both of Flora’s hands, getting reprehensible tears all over them.

“Flora, no. She was already dead.”

“But I—”

“No. Flora, look. Look at me,” Astoria said sternly. “She lost it. She was already dead. I’m the one who did it.”

Flora’s brow contorted and she looked down at the cracked floorboards. Her tone changed.

“Astoria, you can’t go reading minds on the battlefield, or you’ll fall to an enemy who’s won your pity.”

“It wasn’t like that. Alecto stopped and stared at me until I used Legilimency. She started thinking I was some kind of — I-I don’t know —” Astoria tremored, abhorring the taste of her tears’ salt on her lips. “I don’t have pity. I don’t have pity. Hestia would’ve _died_.”

The last thing Astoria wanted was to talk, but she felt a moral obligation to at least tell them about their parents. Flora and Hestia had blamed their own birth on their mother’s death, and they believed their father was a spineless coward. Astoria spoke up:-

“Those two put curses on your mother s-so that she wouldn’t make it through childbirth. So th-that they could have you. And — and they’ve had your dad under the, the Imperius Curse for just short of seventeen years.”

Hestia gasped, and Flora asked, “Is that true, Astoria? What all did you see?”

“Enough to put me on potions.”

Flora wiped the swollen wound on her face from Amycus’s boot and took a few tears with it. The twins were stone silent, staring at their father. Astoria wished she had unearthed it sooner for them. Knowing now was better than never, though. Their dad had not timidly ignored their abuse. Hestia’s tears welled up in relief.

“We can talk about it later. We have to get Dad out of here, or someone could use him again,” Flora said.

“The evacuation point is surely closed by now,” Hestia said as the battle raged louder outside. “And if we go out there…”

“Astoria, you can use Theodore’s Shield Charm, can’t you? You can control the dragons that come out of it to not hurt the Order members, right?” Flora asked.

Astoria buried the memoire Alecto had written into her skull and tried to pull her senses back together.

“Yes, but the Shield can do damage itself just by us moving it around. The Killing Curse still goes through it, too.”

“It’s all we have, isn’t it?” Hestia said. “Let’s go. _Mobilicorpus_.”

Aban neatly Levitated belly-up. The three girls walked to the door, and Astoria wondered what her cousin Adamina would say of the destruction she had left in her precious common room. Hestia dug out her Foe-Shard from her robes, which would have pierced her in the skirmish if not for the frame Rhiannon had set on it.

“All clear. Move,” she said.

Once through the door, Astoria had everyone draw close together and said “ _Protego Nidhogg_ ,” which had become a familiar friend to her as much as Theodore himself. They ran down the steps of Ravenclaw Tower as they heard curses blast upon the stone. Voldemort’s forces were making contact with the castle itself. They moved as fast as they could without tripping and poured out into the corridor. It was so loud, echoing with spells shot up ahead.

“Other way,” Astoria said, and they turned quickly down an auxiliary staircase.

On their way down, they heard a disheartening sound, not unlike thunder but carrying worse implications. Screams followed, and the rumbled crashing continued.

“They broke into the castle!” Flora exclaimed. “Go, go!”

“You can’t run any faster than I can anyway, Flora!” Astoria said.

“Sorry, I’m a _TAD_ nervous right now!” Flora said.

Astoria didn’t reply. The stairs she had counted on being there had fallen away, and Death Eaters swooped inside on cheap brooms, which they soon expended and started firing left and right. All three girls got the same idea at once, and put the hoods of their dressing-gowns up. Without any stairs to cross, they started working their way right through the Death Eaters. Incoming Hogwarts’ forces at first thought that the girls were the enemy, but they never cast magic Dark enough to penetrate a Nidhogg Shield. Meanwhile, Death Eaters took the sight of Hogwarts people firing at the Shield to mean that the trio was on the side of evil, and did not raise their wands at them as they passed through the cluster of duellers. All round, people elbowed their way through the corridor, wands up, and spells exploded everywhere. The Shield was not easy to handle, though, and Astoria had to stretch her neck and arms to restrain the dragon from hurting any Hogwarts fighters. Her hood slid down, and before she could put it up…

“WAIT! THAT’S GREENGRASS!”

Astoria recognised the mask. It was none other than Selwyn, the current holder of Aban’s Imperius Curse. Astoria reacted instantly, and as she still held her wand tight on the dragon, she lifted her right sleeve up with her free arm. Astoria could not see Selwyn’s eyes, but he tilted his head toward her black-veined arm. He believed that she was imminently casting blood magic.

“LET ABAN CARROW GO, SELWYN!” Astoria screamed.

“A-ALL RIGHT, JUST D-DON’T CAST _THAT_!”

His fellows looked over to see what the heck was going wrong so early into their infiltration of the castle. Selwyn waved his arm and ran off to try to make up for his shame, and the girls bolted away.

“Dad moved when Selwyn did that!” Hestia reported. “I think he might be better!”

“Now isn’t the time to test him out!” Flora said, and she sent curses out from the Shield.

The enemy forces had taken particular interest after Selwyn had shouted the Greengrass name, and they hadn’t been round to see Astoria’s trickery. They came upon the group with full force.

Flora started a terrible incantation, “ _Avada_ —”

“NO! SOME ARE IMPERIUSED!” Hestia cried.

“— _Kedavra_.”

The Killing Curse had already lit up Flora’s wand, but as its green light flashed towards an Imperiused assailant, it flickered out and fell like glitter to the floor. Flora cried out in relief. The power and the intent for the Killing Curse both had to be there to land. Flora and her would-be victim had both been spared that event.

 _But I’ve cast it._ Astoria fretted. _I’ve really meant it. Well, that was when my friends were in danger_ … _Is this just me making excuses for myself like Rabastan said?_

They barrelled their way through flying pieces of blasted stone, and when they came upon another destroyed staircase, Astoria said, “Hold tight.”

She released her reign on the dragon which made the Shield incredibly more exhausting to maintain. The dragon arched like a crescent across the wreckage and sank its angry teeth into the next dropped-off landing over. They lifted into the air, following the same arc as the dragon.

“ASTORIA, WHAT THE HELL‽” Hestia shouted as she slid to the bottom of the sphere.

“I SAW RODOLPHUS USE THE WHOLE SHIELD!” Astoria explained as she, too, slipped down like a marble in a hamster ball. “AND I SORT OF USED IT LIKE THIS ON THE CAR!”

“CAR‽ _CAR_ ‽”

“YEAH, I LOVE THIS THING!”

Currently, though, it wasn’t working nearly as well for Astoria’s rescue party as it had for Rodolphus’s, seeing as there wasn’t a giant monster or a car beneath them. They slid all over the place, and Astoria had to hold onto her wand with both hands as her arm began to feel weak. If she let go before impact, they could die. Then, on the landing, they collided with the head of the dragon, and it merged back into the Shield. Astoria stood back up, and hoisted up the other two. Aban might get a concussion, but he wasn’t any help (and he had been the _opposite_ of help earlier), so tough luck for him.

“Where are we going? There’s nowhere safe!” Flora brought up as a ceiling fell in a classroom they passed.

“My plan was to keep running until we find somewhere empty!” Astoria admitted. “Then we can wake your Dad up, and see if he’s back to norma— er, not Imperiused!”

Unfortunately, they came upon another crowd of duellers, and it became a nearly unbearable struggle to get round them. No one could seem to decipher just whose side Astoria’s group was on. The Dark spell encircling them and their status as Slytherins rallied the Hogwarts side against them, whilst their defamed names and track record left them dodging whizzing curses from Voldemort’s people. The twins were starting to tire from holding off both sides so carefully. Right when the Death Eaters and the Order started to realise they were both casting at the same group, it was all interrupted. An outer wall was blasted through, and from an upper courtyard poured in Acromantulas, their hairy backs taller than the highest point of Astoria’s Shield. Flora was screaming, as she had seen a spider impale someone with fangs. Astoria unravelled the dragon again, and it began to rend an Acromantula into pieces, but another one crawled over its body, _over the Shield_ , and into a cluster of fighting students.

“ _REDUCTO_!” Hestia cast, and as the Acromantula turned to dust, fifty more of them came in. There was no way to save everyone.

A loud, musical call came from out on the grounds, and it was followed by many more similar sounds, to the effect of enormous wooden wind chimes. Although the sound was similar, it was not a wooden source, but a natural one, like a haunting call of birds. It had an unprecedented effect on the Acromantulas, who turned away from the juiciness of humans to locate an even tastier delicacy. Through the rubble of the castle, Astoria saw an enormous flock of birds cresting the upper courtyard. Doppelvangas. Astoria had never heard their true call before, and it made her eyes water like the music from her old church did. The evocative call was suited to their cyan, indigo, and gold, like they had been born of the sky rather than the Earth. Their colours lit up in the night from the glow of countless spells, and the Acromantulas were hypnotised by their song. They scrambled to reach the flying prey for a taste of ambrosia over regular meat. Their behaviour was so desperate and erratic it was like someone had blown a whistle meant to disorient them.

After the unplanned ceasefire due to the preternatural sound of the birds, the Death Eaters and Order started fighting once again round the Shield. This time, though, Astoria saw a way out of the castle. They let the Shield’s dragon ravage the rubble to step through and meet the grass. The Acromantulas were all in one place, and it was wonderfully easy to get around them. Astoria looked up and discovered who controlled the Doppelvangas: Professor Sinistra and Professor Grubbly-Plank on the back of a flying horse. Astoria allowed herself a smile only for a second. Then the ground shook beneath them and they were all brought to their knees, and Aban once more slipped along the interior of the Shield. Only a roof and two towers away were giants. The full-sized kind.

“NOW WHERE DID HE GET GIANTS!” Hestia protested, as if everything else was just peachy and _this_ was where she was drawing the line.

Astoria ran across the courtyard to find the steps and looked back at Professor Sinistra, who was in line with the giants’ huge heads. Professor Grubbly-Plank now manoeuvred the Doppelvangas over the lake, hoping to drown some spiders. Professor Sinistra began to do one of Astoria’s favourite things: she called forth a storm.

It was the first time the thundering sounds on the field came from actual thunder. Astoria saw what was left of her Astronomy class make their way across the grounds below: Swati Pevekar and her perfect aim, Anthony Goldstein and his fortitude, and Tracey Davis, the genius. At the back was Theodore with his fuzzy head and hatred of Atmospheric Charms. He led on Flora’s sixth-year class, who had recently learnt how to move the clouds.

“WHOA!” Flora gasped as they located the courtyard steps and tried to balance their descent with spectatorship of the storm.

With Professor Sinistra’s incredible strength as the backbone, the students were able to direct the storm right over the giants’ heads. Though they could not summon the lightning, the sheer height of the giants attracted it to their heads, and they stumbled round, their assault on the castle thwarted as voltage racked their brains. Two of them collided and started fighting each other rather than the Hogwarts forces. They had been properly confused, and Astoria cheered.

The girls reached the grounds, a site of chaotic battle, and Astoria did not feel so good anymore. Although nearly impenetrable in their cocoon, the blackness of the shield and of the night made it impossible to discern friend from foe, and they ended up doing little more than sightseeing. It was time to find a place to rouse Aban, and make a change of plans. They were panting as they nestled themselves by a knoll, thus far untouched since it had no point of entry to the damaged castle.

“ _Rennervate_ ,” Flora said over her father’s head, and he made lots of father-ish noises, followed by fifteen questions. None of the answers mattered, though, because he suddenly shut his mouth and gave his girls a hug, sobbing in between them. Astoria could tell that having almost two decades of the Imperius Curse in his head had done him damage. His speech was highly pressured without regards to the battle on the other side of the hills. He was unfamiliar with certain ideas like Shields, and he kept repeating his daughters’ full names — “ _Flora Asrai Carrow, Hestia Adhene Carrow_ …”

“Wait!” he exclaimed in profound confusion. “My… Where…? My— no, they, not my… I… wait, your… my… Where _are_ they?”

Flora backed away from his hugs, and said, “They’re gone, Dad. They were Death Eaters, remember? They made you hurt us back there. They had your mind under control.”

Though ailing psychologically from the Imperius Curse, Aban Carrow was no Crouch Jr, and once he understood exactly what the commotion was about, he was speaking staunchly against Voldemort. Sometimes, his words jumbled up into a puzzle. “I love you” and “I’m sorry” always came out right, though.

Aban was not fit to fight, as he was barely fit to unbutton the shirt collar that was so obviously bothering him. Flora and Hestia kept looking at each other, unsure of what to do.

“Apparate away,” Astoria decided for them. “Not home, but somewhere. Someone might come looking for Alecto and Amycus at the house for letting Harry Potter slip away.”

“R-Right,” Hestia said, “we can’t go home, but maybe we could…”

The twins started suggesting locations back and forth, and decided to Apparate to Hestia’s favourite apothecary, from whence they could finesse their way into a Muggle hotel. A nice one.

Keeping the Shield up made it difficult to know exactly when they had passed the Apparition point, so they simply picked a direction and walked. Astoria felt rocks beneath her feet, and discovered the damage from her Fiendfyre. It served as a convenient marker for where the Apparition point began.

“You two can Apparate?” the twins’ father asked, aghast. “You don’t have a license.”

Aban held out his fingers and tried counting something.

“No, no license. You’re not seventeen. It’s only May,” he reasoned (reasoning was a good sign for him, all things considered).

“Dad, we’re Slytherins,” Hestia said. “We don’t need a license.”

She took her father’s hand, and Flora held out hers to Astoria.

“I can’t come with you,” Astoria said.

She felt Hestia’s ire and was suddenly accused of tricking them to the edge of the grounds. Astoria had had ulterior motives, but it was because she wanted them to be safe. She bit her lip at the irony of having the same argument in the same place, except this time, it wasn’t with a frantic Ginny. It was with two of her best friends. She struggled for words to express why she wanted to stay and fight, but it mostly came out as people’s names rather than a solid argument.

“You were both going to stay, too, and fight for the Order, but this cropped up,” Astoria said, nodding towards Aban, who was watching the dormant dragon swirl round the shield.

“Yeah, but, now that we’re here, and we’re safe, and alive—” Hestia said. “I can’t even believe we’re all alive! I can’t have you going back there!”

“Hestia,” Flora finally helped out. “For us it’s necessity, but for Astoria, she feels like it’s desertion. Which it isn’t, since, need I remind her, she’s _underage_. But anyway. She has people here that, well, we don’t have.”

“IS THIS ABOUT MALFOY AGAIN BECAUSE I SWEAR—”

“Hestia, you would never leave Rhiannon!” Astoria interrupted. “This is something I have to do! I’m going back with the Astronomy students, and I’m going to stay with Professor Sinistra! I won’t do anything stupid!”

“We didn’t even know if you were _alive_ last summer, and now this!” Hestia cried.

But Hestia saw a school falling apart behind them, and she heard the suffering coming over the hills, exacted upon innocents by those in league with the people who had taken her childhood away. She wiped her face.

“Astoria, don’t you die,” Hestia said, and she handed off her Foe-Shard as she hugged her. “Astoria, I’m serious, you’re not allowed.”

“Okay, Hestia.”

“You’re _not_ allowed,” Flora emphasised, and she gave Astoria a rare hug. “Use any ugly curse you need to save your skin. Although I would recommend against blood m—”

“Yes, Flora, I’ve learnt that, yes. I love you both.”

“We love you, too,” Hestia said.

Astoria released the Shield, and she watched them leave with their spiffy new father. She dashed back up the grounds, which was not as easy as running down had been, and by the time she got to the top, she was regretting not leaving with the twins. She was instantly caught in a sea of battle, having to parry, Shield, and curse her way through to find any semblance of formation. Only after losing and re-conjuring a boot, taking two hits, and stepping on a body did Astoria find the Astronomy group, but it was even more frightening since they were fighting giants.

“ASTORIA!” Theodore exclaimed as he got a storm cloud low enough to obscure a giant’s view. “YOU NEED TO DISAPPARATE!”

“GIVE UP ON THAT, THEODORE!” she responded.

At last, she felt helpful as her spell took some of the burden off of her class and the sixth-years. The Acromantulas had come in a second wave, though, and those that had not been led to the lake by Professor Grubbly-Plank were dragging people away or shooting webs at them. The Doppelvangas were too far from this group of spiders to have any effect. Sweeping down from the flying horse, Professor Sinistra did not see Astoria in the confusion. Acting as though the hundred-foot-tall giants and the giant spiders were nothing to be concerned about, Professor Sinistra knelt bizarrely to the ground, and her hand sank into a mist that had rolled in beneath the grasp of anyone’s attention.

“There are over one-hundred dementors!” Professor Sinistra yelled with an Amplified voice.

A few Patronuses began to light the darkness, but it would not be enough. Astoria, and nobody else, saw Professor Sinistra try to cast a Patronus — just one last try — to no avail.

Astoria was bumped out of the way of a loose curse, and she clumsily cast a Shield over her group a few moments late. When she stood up, she saw Professor Sinistra running _toward_ the dementors as they emerged from the woods, and a bright silver doe of unknown origin went bounding after her. Astoria could not rest assured that one Patronus was enough, or that it would remain, as Professor Sinistra disappeared, intending to chase creatures off with the borrowed Patronus. Astoria tried to cast her Patronus, but it was incorporeal, and with so many curses descending upon her group, it became an unproductive use of her time. Wizards and witches with better focus sent Patronuses everywhere, and she unfortunately found herself relying on them.

Once the giants were properly disoriented and started stomping back to the mountains to quarrel with one another, Astoria discovered why it had been so hard to make it through the corridors earlier with her group: many Slytherins were fighting for Voldemort. Astoria was coming wand-to-wand with classmates, and people she walked by each day. Astoria fought alongside Tracey and Theodore, with Max and Montel close behind, until her hand went numb and the sweat poured into her eyes. If only this had happened during the day, then she would be able to see better, but then again, so would the Death Eaters. There was no telling what time it was, or how much she could do before she would collapse from exhaustion. And then everyone was suddenly thrown by Voldemort’s voice again.

“You have fought valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery.”

Astoria shivered at the sound, but her mouth twisted at his toddlerish use of the third-person. How would it sound if she pranced round calling herself “Lady Greengrass?”

“You have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste. Lord Voldemort is merciful,” he continued, and Astoria snorted, “I command my forces to retreat immediately.”

Suddenly, there were no longer any curses to dodge or send back.

“You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured. I speak now, Harry Potter directly to you…”

As Voldemort continued to taunt Harry Potter, wherever the hell _he_ was, Astoria stopped paying attention. Treat the injured. Treat the injured! There was one free hour nobody expected! She ran to the castle, where she knew the falling walls and blasted corridors had done just as much as any Death Eater with a Killing Curse. And, oh, it was a disaster inside. The structural damage was one thing, but Astoria’s eyes kept drawing to all of the blood splashed onto the walls. Where to start? People were scrambling in round her, trying to find family members, for better or worse…

And then her eyes happened upon something very light on the landing up above, and she started moving towards it. As she got closer, she realised that it was shaped like a head, and surrounded by black clothes everywhere. There was a hand, just as light as the hair.

“NO, NO, NO, _NO_ , _NO_!”

Astoria shoved people out of the way as she went up the stairs, at times on two feet and at times on all fours. Her backbone quaked, and her vision blurred with water, and she screamed, but she screamed for nobody to hear, for nobody else to care.

 _Not this_ , _not him_. She had the words viscerally ingrained, like lines of a prayer she had never wanted to learn. _Anything but this_.

Astoria slid down, skidding open a wound in her leg, as she descended upon the figure of Draco Malfoy, who was sprawled over top of a Death Eater, unmoving. There was nothing else to do in this battle except cry. Whatever Voldemort had said about Harry meeting him in the woods for a duel — forget it. _Astoria_ was going into those woods, and she was going to use all the blood magic she knew how to, and she was going to tear Voldemort’s body into pieces and feed it to the werewolves he had sicced on the students.

She brushed Draco’s hair out of his face and saw terrible burns upon him, and when she took his hand into hers, it was all black and sooty on the underside. It was warm, so what mockingly recent moment had she missed? What _split second_ could she have changed to have stopped this?

Draco’s hand twitched decidedly in hers, and Astoria’s upside-down world flipped right-side up again. Quite frankly, her nerves had no clue how to react anymore, and she started shed a different kind of tear. Draco was alive. The world was not over.

“Draco.”

No, Draco was more than out cold, and it was going to take a lot more than saying his name to wake him. She considered how to bring him to consciousness, but what would that ultimately achieve? He would have to go back to the line of fire, and Astoria could not take the feeling of losing him again, especially if it became reality. She would put him with the injured, out of the battle. Astoria felt round his head, neck, and chest for any fractures. Unconsciousness and burns aside, Draco was okay. In fact, he was _less_ beat up than Astoria, though much of his sleeves had been singed off.

 _I would have been dead long ago had it not been for you_ , she thought as she brushed his cheek. Draco had taken his precious time to harness her duelling skills back when they thought things were “bad.” Oh, if only they had known September and October weren’t all that bad in the scope of today’s calamity. Draco had made her stronger then. He made her stronger now, though he wasn’t awake to realise it.

Astoria saw his Dark Mark, ugly as ever, and realised that it would not be so easy as setting Draco amongst the Hogwarts injured. Someone might take one look at his Mark and kill him whilst he was down. Even if they didn’t, no one was going to treat him. The Foe-Shard she had given him was still round his wrist, and when she glanced into it, she saw countless dots of faces. His enemies were on both sides.

“It’s just me and you,” she sighed, wondering if he had any perception of her voice. It certainly didn’t do any harm to talk to him, even if it was a bit silly. It made her feel better, anyway.

“I’ve had a terrible night. I’ve forgotten all about my Arithmancy homework,” she whispered, as she gently brushed a Colour-Changing Charm into his hair. It turned reddish-brown, which looked wholly unsuitable. She dabbed a fake mole onto his nose, and then changed the colour of his clothes from black to blue.

“You look so funny, Draco.”

Her hand hovered over his left arm, and the skull of the Dark Mark snarled at her. Touching the Dark Mark directly would alert Voldemort, but the spell to remove it was thankfully contact-free. Astoria, however, considered the likelihood of the pain waking Draco up and causing him to automatically grab his arm before the Dark Mark was totally gone. With reluctance, she paralysed his right hand with a quick jinx, one he had taught her himself. Then she numbed his entire left arm, hoping that would be enough. Over the Death Eaters’ brand, she spread out her palm, and then twisted it into a balled fist.

“ _Morkredd_ ,” she said, and there had not been a greater feeling since he had last kissed her lips. His arm twitched, and the Dark Mark blurred like it had been dipped in water, before its viscous remnants emerged from the skin and dripped off.

“I’m sorry if it hurt,” Astoria whispered.

She had perhaps been too eager to see Draco rid of the thing, since she had opened a small cut into the scar that the spell had left behind. Embarrassed even though he wasn’t looking, she cleaned the wound and dressed it. She was lucky that the scar did not resemble an inactive Dark Mark, or she would have had to take the long-sleeve shirt off of the Death Eater beneath them and give it to Draco. Only when she Mobilised Draco’s disguised body did she discover that the Death Eater beneath them was Xander Lofthouse, the son of the wizard Astoria had killed in her house. Secretly, Astoria added two layers of Bewitched Sleep to Xander, so that he would not wake up for days. She lifted Draco again and brought him into the Great Hall. Even though he was technically with her, Astoria faced the view alone.

There were dead everywhere, the smell of their shed blood heavy in the air. In fact, it was difficult to find the group of injured because of the number of dead, and bodies were still being brought in. Astoria walked quickly to stay out of the way, though she felt stony in her body and frozen in time. Professor Babbling, her Ancient Runes professor of three years, lay on a white sheet on the floor, mourned by Professor Vector and Madam Pince, who bore injuries themselves. Farther off, the Weasley family were crying over one of theirs. Ginny hugged the hence-missing Hermione Granger and wept. Astoria then paused.

There lay a brunet head coming out of a pile of rumpled clothes she had seen earlier. Next to this body lay Nymphadora Tonks. Astoria let the thought hang and took Draco over to a table for the injured. She turned back, and she wished that her return trip would not give her the same picture. By putting the thought on hold, didn’t that mean it wasn’t real? By giving it another moment, didn’t that mean something would change? Astoria could not find the original spot at first. It must have meant that Professor Lupin and Tonks had simply finished their rest, sat back up, and walked away. But the Weasleys and their hair were quite an obvious bunch, and indeed, Rhiannon’s dear professor and his wife were not far off. They were among the dead. There was no more moment to hold.


	28. Labyrinth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 28 - "Bad Ritual" by Timber Timbre
> 
> **Content warning: sexual harassment**

Astoria sat on the floor cross-legged with her hands drooped. She should be helping the injured, or helping to bring in bodies, or doing something. But since she had sat down here, she could not move. The fallen couple’s shoes were sticking up inches from her. Their hands were limp across the floor, almost touching each other’s. They looked as though they were nothing more than a little under the weather.

Back when Astoria, Rhiannon, and the twins practised D.A.D.A. in the Astronomy library, it had felt like every other time Rhiannon cast a spell, she would say, “Professor Lupin taught me this,” or “Professor Lupin said to do this.” Astoria could almost hear her voice. “ _Professor Lupin said I’d pass me O.W.L.s_!”

 _Don’t come back_ , _Rhiannon_ , Astoria thought.

The couple had just been married, too. Astoria had been too depressed to go to the wedding, since she didn’t want to be a downer at a happy gathering, so Rhiannon had come back telling her all about it.

“ _Tonks can really dance_!” Rhiannon had said. “ _Look, here’s her bouquet! She gave me it, ain’t it nice_? _I’m gonna use magic to save it_.”

Astoria remembered, once again, her mother’s conversation with Narcissa Malfoy about how the Order was at terrible risk. Why couldn’t she go back in time, and make the Tonks family leave Britain? Astoria wiped her dirty sleeve on her face. Though not nearly as close with the couple as Rhiannon had been, Astoria never would have cast a Patronus Charm if it had not been for Professor Lupin. And she and Nymphadora had been sung the same lullaby as toddlers, a French one that both of their mothers had passed to them. With the death of her husband, daughter, and son-in-law, Andromeda Tonks was now alone. She likely didn’t know it yet. Astoria sobbed.

“Hello.”

Ginny Weasley handed Astoria a band to tie her sticky hair back. Ginny did not look surprised to see that Astoria had been fighting. Unlike so many others that night, she instantly knew what side Astoria was on. Ginny’s confidence in her felt wonderful, and Astoria basked in it. She was so glad to not sit next to Tonks and Lupin alone.

“Tonks was one of my best friends, and Lupin was an awesome teacher,” Ginny said. “They’re heroes.”

Her voice was sad, but very strong. She somehow was able to mourn them without being overcome anew. Astoria wasn’t very much like Ginny.

“I’m so sorry about your brother, Ginny.”

“Fred. He’s my hero, too,” Ginny said softly.

Astoria remembered Fred Weasley as being one of the boys who had picked on Rhiannon for showing up to the Dumbledore’s Army recruitment, and as a troublemaker, and the one who nearly exploded the Great Hall with his twin brother. What a character he was… He wouldn’t have wanted his family to be sad and distracted for the rest of the fight.

“I’m going out to find more injured now. Would you come with me?” Ginny asked.

 _“Me_?” Astoria blurted.

“Yeah, you.”

Astoria said goodbye to Tonks and Professor Lupin in her head and walked past the feet of many others she did not know. She was so tired. She didn’t know how she thought she’d be able to get back out there when the hour was up. The adrenaline was gone. It was all exhaustion and discomfort.

“Do you know how much time we have left? I… lost count when we found Tonks,” Ginny choked.

“Er, I lost count, too,” Astoria said, then added, “Well, we’ll hear when the time’s up. He’ll probably talk in the third person again.”

“Seems about right. ‘ _Lord Voldymort is now cheesed off_ ,’” Ginny imitated in a high, hissy voice.

A little dark humour went a long way when everything was in pieces. The girls spent most of their time convincing the panicked injured to let them Mobilise them. Astoria had to use a few nasty first-aid tricks she had tried on herself in the funeral parlour. In the expanse of torn-up grass, Voldemort had left his injured for dead. Some of them begged to be taken in to the castle with their last breaths. With the potential for it to be a trick, or for them to have Dark magic sealed away in their bodies, they were passed over by the frantic Hogwarts staff, who were tragically finding the dead bodies of underage students who had sneaked back.

There was no sight of Professor Sinistra’s wide-brimmed hat bobbing above the crowd anywhere. It weighed on Astoria more each moment. She had last seen her running towards a hundred dementors. But that doe had been protecting her, and Professor Grubbly-Plank had sent round a tiger Patronus, too. During the ceasefire, the dementors hovered above the trees of the Forbidden Forest, likely waiting for Harry Potter to turn himself in. Astoria could only imagine what Ginny was going through behind her façade.

Ginny located Ernie Macmillan, and they created a chain to get the bodies up to the castle. Astoria trotted along the edge of the Hogsmeade path, Mobilising injured people up to Ginny, who Mobilised them to Ernie, who sent them into the castle. It worked well until Astoria became distracted. She saw something stir by a lantern still flickering near Professor Sinistra’s house. She assumed the worst at first, but then realised it was Professor Sinistra herself, walking up the path. And then, without casting anything, Professor Sinistra opened the door. That did not sit right. Professor Sinistra had enchantments galore over her house so that a certain somebody would not be able to get in. Why was the house left unprotected, and why was the door already unlocked? Astoria signalled to Ginny and came up with a failproof lie.

“I found Professor Sinistra! I’m going to go help her out in Hogsmeade!” Astoria said.

“ _Keep safe_!” Ginny waved and went back with her family.

Astoria gulped down some conjured water and quickly ran to Hogsmeade. She reached Professor Sinistra’s turreted, oddly-shaped house and bounded through the purple front door. Astoria got a huge whiff of dust, old newspaper ink, and bundimun when she entered the house. Indeed, it was entirely unprotected. If she could get in, anyone could. Astoria secured the door behind her. It was totally dark inside, which was even less promising, as it meant that Professor Sinistra had been ambling without being able to see. Professor Sinistra’s house had always given Astoria the creeps regardless of the current threats. The passage of time was a weather that could not enter the walls of the house, and the only hint that it was 1998 on the inside was the topmost layer of newspapers. Astoria had to risk giving her location away by lighting her wand low, as she absolutely could not see. By this point of the entrance hall, she should have tripped on Crouch’s shoes. They had been moved.

The fact that Astoria had not been greeted at the door by a worried Professor Sinistra heightened the tension she already had. Only one thing made sense. Rabastan Lestrange was here, in the house. He had walked Astoria’s memories of its halls in search of the bed he had never slept in, and he was bound to be there now. The house had been both a miraculous shelter and an unspeakable hell to Astoria, and presently, it was as dark as Rabastan’s mind. She tinted her wand light to a dull red and ascended the staircase. The twigwork banisters cast handwritten shadows as she ascended with Silenced footsteps and bated breath. The rushing tides of fighters and the sounds of crackling curses had been etched into Astoria’s skull, and she knew it would be many years before her mind would cease to spontaneously produce the sound. But oh, what she would have done for sounds of Voldemort’s war to trick upon her ears rather than the chinking of Rabastan’s metal tools.

Astoria passed the third level, notable as the last such level with a clean view down to the kitchen by way of transparent flooring. In the dark house, though, the sights weren’t there. Professor Sinistra’s bedroom was on the sixth floor. Astoria’s body was battle-worn, but still she rose, because time could not be squandered. It was yet another time when she had to feel the ice of a Disillusionment Charm lick down her spine, so that Rabastan might not be able to aim at her. It had done little in the horrific fight with Alecto, who had Revealed her quickly, but if Astoria could increase any chance of success she had against Rabastan, she would.

From the main landing of the sixth floor, Astoria extinguished her light. Rabastan had lit sconces on the walls, the ones leading from the stair to the bedroom. Astoria was repulsed to know that he was parallel to a place she herself, at times, slept. She could hear him making noise. She held her wand ahead of her. Her footsteps were already Silenced, but she did one better and Silenced the whole wood floor before stepping into the hall. The floorboards would not so much as creak from weight. There was only one thing in her mind: to rid the world of Rabastan Lestrange. She approached the bedroom.

In the faint light beneath the starry ceiling, Rabastan stood alone and nude, dowsing himself with conjured water in one hand and itching all over with his other. With the water, the scent of Amortentia poured heavily from his skin, which was blotchy and bright red even in the room’s violet hue. His cloak, trousers, and torture devices were on the floor in a heap, and he had evidently stripped to nothing in haste. A drawer was open, and Professor Sinistra’s delicates were strewn everywhere. Rabastan cracked his whip at another drawer in the dresser and said, “ _Accio trousers_.” Professor Sinistra had, of course, saved every article of Crouch’s old wardrobe, and it was no surprise that the malnourished Rabastan was able to fit into the clothing of a nineteen-year-old.

On Rabastan’s face, no Dark wound had healed. He still had the same bruise above his left eye, cut above his right, and missing left ear. His master had also given him a new wound. Glowing magical sutures held tight to a fresh, rough puncture in his stomach. His dark brown hair dripped across his face, which Astoria aimed at.

“ _Avada Kedavra_!”

The spell broke into dust so suddenly Astoria had not realised it failed until she saw Rabastan crack his whip all over the place. Her rage ignited. She knew her intent of the spell had been true, and could not imagine what had gone wrong. He, too, tried a Killing Curse, which was not aimed correctly anyway, and it puffed and fizzled out. There was no way either of them would have hesitated to kill the other. That meant that the countless apotropaic charms in the house had really exerted power over Dark magic. Yet there was something still more powerful than Dark spells, and that was a creature born of the dark. As Astoria retreated, she saw the outline of a tall, hooded figure illuminate next to Rabastan as he shot out spells. He had brought a dementor with him, likely having promised it a Kiss during the ceasefire.

“ _Hominem Revelio_!” Rabastan cast, but Astoria retreated down the hall and missed the hit. She had to find the professor. She was relieved to know that Sinistra was nowhere near Rabastan, but with both him and a dementor in the house, she was not safe. At least with the way Rabastan called out for the professor, it meant she was not Imperiused. If Professor Sinistra had, by some minute chance, been successfully Imperiused, she would have come to him by now. Maybe Astoria had misinterpreted what she had seen from the Hogwarts grounds.

“ _VEEERRRY_ nice, Aurora! Itching powder in your lingerie! You know what I don’t like about that? _HOW IT FEELS_ _IN THE HOLE IN MY STOMACH_! _Incendio_! There, now the bed you shared with precious Barty is on fire! You’ll have to come out from hiding if you want to put it out! The whole house will _burn_ , Aurora! And speaking of which, it will take your little apprentice with it, if I don’t have her Kissed first! Let’s make sure we all stay together inside now, right? _Praesaepio spatium_!”

Based on the lack of response, Rabastan was effectively talking to himself. But he did clarify the threats for Astoria; in addition to his ever-so-wonderful self, she was now trapped in a house with a dementor, a fire, and worst of all, him. Astoria escaped down the main stair, and it was from the banister that Rabastan sent Killing Curses as the air began to take on a hint of smoke. Astoria dodged his spells even though they each failed, but Rabastan was quickly becoming smart to the fact that the house forbade Dark acts, and sent down natural, but no less lethal, spells that he had twisted for his own use.

“Aw, come back! Come back! _I’ve missed you so much, Astoria_!”

Astoria had to Bombard the side of the banister open and conjure a huge, thick pillow that was anything but invisible. She jumped from the second floor to the ground floor. Not two seconds after her knees made impact with the pillow was it sliced open by Rabastan.

“Folk magic, Aurora, _really_ ‽” Rabastan yelled as he, too, jumped from the stairs onto Astoria’s pillow. “You think _folk magic_ is going to stop me‽ Is that what all this junk is‽ _Accio all nazars_!”

The hanging nazars shook with the incredible force of Rabastan’s spell, but they had evidently all been set with Anti-Summoning spells, and regardless, Rabastan did not know the terminology for any other talismans Professor Sinistra had throughout the house. He was thwarted, but then again, so was Astoria and the Dark magic she had spent all year learning.

“You know, Aurora, I’m all for a game of hide-and-seek, but this isn’t going to work between us if you’re a pile of ash when I find you! We can do without the house, of course, since you won’t know any difference once you’re Kissed! I could never live in this disaster, especially knowing that your hatstand husband ran his hands all over this place!”

Rabastan continued to address the missing professor even with no response. Using the dementor’s salivation as a cue that he was moving in the right direction, Rabastan chased the invisible Astoria though the kitchen and still room. She took a turn into the plant-filled sunroom that he did not take. She could see him and the monster through a diamond-shaped window in the wall. He had stopped to scratch his stomach but started twitching uncontrollably. It must have been residual magic from the blood curse Astoria had used on him. Unfortunately, he was able to get the judders back under control. Astoria could only imagine the extent of damage to the upper levels from the fire and wondered how long it would take to smother her down here.

 _Where are you_ , _Professor_?

As Rabastan skulked about, he eventually passed the corridor between them. Astoria aimed and fired.

“ _Diffindo_!”

Rabastan let out a laugh in response to the cut on his neck and instantly healed it up. There was a reason Voldemort had placed him in such a high position.

Rabastan followed the sound of Astoria’s voice, and she ran deeper into the house, into places she’d been forbidden to go. She understood that Professor Sinistra had crafted her house this way to fuddle Rabastan’s far-reaching Legilimency from the outside, but it was leading to plenty of confusion on the inside. Astoria zipped down a narrow hallway that had two adjoining sets of mismatched stairs at the end. Being so uneven, they were horrible to try to descend in the dark, and the only light sources were Rabastan’s intermittent, glowing spells. At the bottom of the abstract steps, Astoria found only one door and was forced to go through it. She slammed the door and enchanted it shut, but she saw a white glow through the cracks, and the dementor’s mist started to come through the bottom. She felt like she was in a courtyard, but that didn’t make sense. Rabastan had already cast a spell to prevent escaping to the outside. She stood on a wooden deck with a lattice overhang, and long ferns in clay pots hung from it, swinging to and fro from the force of spells being shot at the door behind. The deck looked not to the outside, but above an extra living room, adorned with red patterned rugs and backless seats surrounded by canopies. There was a tightly wound, spiral staircase to the place below, which Astoria took, but the constant twisting made her move slower, and she heard Rabastan break down the door above. The room’s huge, semicircle fireplace opened into a cave.

Astoria ran across the living area and, choosing against the intimidating cave, she clambered up the staircase off the next corridor, but to her horror in the darkness, she found that it did not lead anywhere. Astoria held her breath, hunched beneath the high wedge between the steps and the ceiling. Rabastan came into view, his wand light exposing his half-naked state. His teeth clattered as he twitched again with the magic from Astoria’s blood. His Dark Mark throbbed and twisted on his arm as his master summoned him angrily. Rabastan endured the pain of the Mark rather than heed its message.

 _Take him back_ , Astoria begged. _Take him back_ , _make him leave_.

“You must be here somewhere, Green-bean. _Hominem Revelio_.”

The charm hit Astoria like a shower that was too hot. She had come into view, but had no place to go. Rabastan beamed when he saw her.

“Oh, I wish I had a picture of that look of fear on your face, Astoria. Seeing as my witch put these knick-knacks everywhere, I can’t use Dark magic. I’m left with the option to cut you up the _slow_ way,” Rabastan said, slicking back his wet hair. “Would you rather be Kissed? I’m really trying to save this one’s appetite for Aurora, though, so I guess cutting you up it is. _Do you want me to make it an interesting pattern_?”

“ _Expelliarmus_!” Astoria responded, but as Rabastan’s whip flung above his head, he merely snagged its long tail back into his fist. Astoria cast a Shield Charm and held it tightly.

“Hm,” Rabastan said in boredom. “I know. I’ll use you to find her. That bitch is in here somewhere. _Glisseo_.”

With unreal speed, the staircase on which Astoria stood turned into a slide, and Rabastan was able to aim beneath her scattered Shield Charm.

“ _Diffindo_!”

Astoria was cut across the chest and could hardly let go of the wound to try to dress it. The cut had been more akin to a small Cruciatus Curse than a regular spell, as though Rabastan was pushing the boundaries of natural magic even with the protections in place. Rabastan relished in her show of pain, but then his attention diverted.

Professor Sinistra had come rushing into the room, casting myriads of spells at him. In the dark, though, the spells gave off a highly visible glow, and he was able to intercept them. Astoria lay on the steps bleeding and watching them duel helplessly. The dementor moved toward Professor Sinistra, but at least as long as it was not Kissing her, Sinistra was quite used to the feeling of being near one. However, she had no protection except to run away from it to the other side, and it pursued her quickly. Astoria tried to cast her Patronus, but her pain prevented her. Rabastan followed the dementor closely behind, and taunted his object of obsession, his excitement causing his whole body to twist and shake again.

“Aha! How did you like the _present_ I got you back in March, Aurora? You never sent me a thank-you note! I know you like toffee fudge, but I could only find plain! Ha ha! By the way, how do you like my cologne? I bet I smell familiar to you.”

Professor Sinistra did not humour Rabastan in the slightest. The only words coming out of her mouth were incantations. She shot a heavy healing spell at Astoria and followed it up with a quick Shield from her wand, all whilst catching Rabastan’s magic with her right hand and flinging it into the walls. Astoria’s heartbeat reminded her how glad she was that the power of Aurora Sinistra was not on the side of Death Eaters.

“You’d destroy the home you made with darling Barty?” Rabastan mocked, his neck cracking with blood magic as he struggled to stay still. “It’s already on fire.”

“The fire is out, and his name was Jonah,” Professor Sinistra said calmly.

“Jonah, yeah, and how did your pet _Jonah_ kiss you before _he_ was Kissed? He was always — _mleh_ — _mleh_ — sticking his tongue out. _Did he lick you like a dog_?”

Rabastan laughed derisively, but his histrionic display threw him off guard. Professor Sinistra carved a massive threshold across his body, as if to send the pieces of him to two different dimensions. Rabastan figured this out all too quickly and manipulated her spell off of him. However, he couldn’t get rid of it entirely, and a portal very similar to the one Snape had made in Hogwarts opened. Astoria took this as a cue and raised her wand.

“ _BOMBARDA_!”

Rabastan was hit, and he fell through the screen and into a great beyond — space between space. But he had not taken the dementor with him, and he was definitely not dead. Professor Sinistra Mobilised Astoria across the corridor all whilst being chased by the dementor, and threw her into the darkness of the cavernous fireplace. Astoria again tried to cast a Patronus, but there was too much on her mind.

Within the cave was another threshold, already created.

“Professor?”

“Go!”

Astoria prepared for the sense of losing gravity as they passed the glowing threshold and continued onwards into the deep. They both lit their wands. Professor Sinistra followed her. It was getting cold.

“Can the dementor come…?” worried Astoria.

“It’s here, keep running! I’m going to move more rooms!”

Rabastan’s voice met them, too, and it was equally chilling as the dementor’s presence closing in from depths unknown.

“What’s wrong? Don’t you want to Kiss? Let’s not forget I can move rooms, too, Aurora!”

As if a dreary day had broken with Rabastan’s spell, the twisting darkness dissolved, and they entered a lit maze with mildew-ridden white bricks. The dementor pursuing them was thankfully visible in this new environment, but Professor Sinistra growled.

“ _Mutata room_!” she cast, but nothing happened; they were still running through the maze. After several turns through the narrow halls, Astoria felt she must speak up.

“Professor, he’s trying to corner us in this maze with the dementor!”

“Well, I can’t change the room since it must not be enclosed on all sides, but I can do _this_ ,” Professor Sinistra said.

Professor Sinistra traced her right hand along the brick wall as they ran, and then, at some apparently good spot, cast an enormous curse to blast the walls open. Without waiting for Astoria to react, she Mobilised her through, and then jumped over the rubble herself. She walled it up quickly, out of the reach of the dementor. Astoria watched her exhale in relief, but not all of their problems were gone.

“You used Dark magic to break the walls. I thought it couldn’t be used in the house,” Astoria whispered anxiously.

“We are not in the house,” Professor Sinistra said hoarsely. “This is all freshly created space, inaccessible without dimensional magic.”

“Well, with as long as we’ve been running, we must be under the castle by now,” Astoria estimated.

“I just said we’re in magically created space. There is no location,” Professor Sinistra corrected her.

Astoria studied her dark brown eyes, hoping to catch something of a plan behind them. But the professor’s Occlumency was as stony as the white walls still surrounding them. They moved forward cautiously. There were now many barred rooms off of the halls, copied _en masse_ , all with a mint green drywall that accentuated the presence of another bundimun population, which had seeped out from the house’s normal foundation and peeled the paint. Each of the rooms had a folding bed.

“Your use of Extension Charms is all kinds of illegal, Aurora!” Rabastan yelled from not far off. “How do you like the place _I_ made, hm? Seem familiar? It’s where you spoon-fed your brain-dead Barty!”

Indeed, this was a hastily-made replica of Azkaban’s unhospitable hospice, the place where the Kissed were sent. Rabastan had only been there once, during his breakout, to attack Professor Sinistra. This represented what he knew of the place. He wanted psychological warfare. Astoria felt the press of Rabastan’s Legilimency increase, for Rabastan’s was a mind that could be felt much distance away. He was always pushing. Astoria’s Occlumency was not as good as the Professor’s, but for once, that might not have been such a bad thing… She knew he was close because she could feel him, and she checked Hestia’s Foe-Shard. His face was disturbingly clear — he was in the very next corridor over! Astoria pointed her wand at the metal bars on the fake prison cells.

“ _Syssorevounlitho_!”

Professor Sinistra startled, but Astoria knew what she was doing, and that she had to do it _now_. The metal bars ripped right out of the concrete and clanged together, creating a smaller-than-usual Boulder Curse, but a perfectly good bludgeon. She sent it down the hallway, where it collided with, broke, and collected bricks into its body. And then she sicced it on Rabastan. Astoria knew the spell would not distract him for long, but if it would occupy him for only a second, Astoria would take it. She had been able to Reduct Parkinson’s Imperiused rendition of the spell, and Rabastan would surely have no trouble in turning Astoria’s boulder to dust. So she ran as fast as she could to find him, ignoring Professor Sinistra’s screams.

There was Rabastan, closer than the professor had thought, sweating over bright red scratch marks on his skin as he tried to Reduct the boulder. Astoria risked unfettering the boulder from her wand to aim at his chest. She would have to get him before the boulder would come back to her.

“ _Avada Kedavra_!”

“ _Stupefy — argh_!”

Rabastan had once again evaded death, but not injury. Smart, quick, and skilled enough to intercept the Killing Curse with his own Stunning Spell, Rabastan had made the split-second decision to get hit with the remnants of the Cursed Boulder for the sake of his life. He doubled over, and Astoria kept casting, even as the boulder went wild in the hall.

“ _Avada Kedavra_! _Avada Kedavra_!”

Rabastan still managed to intercept her curses whilst dodging the rolling metal object. Professor Sinistra rounded the corner and added to the erupting duel:-

“ _AVADA KEDAVRA_!”

Professor Sinistra’s Killing Curse exploded against his desperate Stunning Spell. It was fortunate that Professor Sinistra had claimed the Killing Curse first — two Killing Curses would not cancel one another out, even if they crossed. Rabastan continued with powerful Stunners, indeed looking for his chance to send something darker Astoria’s way. She meanwhile had to Reduct the Cursed Boulder herself, as it had come rolling towards Professor Sinistra. Once she beat the thing to dust, she cast the very same on Rabastan. He took a dive, cursed open the bars of one of the cells, and rolled in as a Killing Curse narrowly missed his head. Astoria and Professor Sinistra instantly Blasted the entire room, sending explosive debris onto their already tattered clothing.

“He got away!” Astoria screamed.

“How do you know?” Professor Sinistra cried.

“I’ve got no Occlumency! I feel him right below us!” Astoria said. “He’s not using Occlumency either!”

As a fellow Legilimens, Rabastan could feel Astoria’s mind, too, and hastened upon the opportunity. Astoria saw him cutting the floor beneath her feet with the glowing blue of dimensional magic. She lunged, but there was no time for either her or the professor to react. The cavity had already opened below, and as Astoria fell down, a Sleeping Spell raced up behind her back, hitting Professor Sinistra.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"The serene constellations above wink knowingly. But not even these eyes are deep enough to outgaze me, to deceive the deceiver, illude the illusionist. To tell the truth, I am a very bad mesmeric subject, unable to be drawn in by Hypnos' Heaven."_  
>  -"Drink to me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes" from _Dreams for Sleepwalkers_ by T. Ligotti


	29. Three Minds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"What do you see now?  
>  Globes of red, yellow, purple.  
> Just a moment! And now?  
>  My father and mother and sisters.  
> ...Very well, we'll make the glasses accordingly."_  
> -"Dippold the Optician," E. L. Masters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 29 - "Misery Loves Company" by Emilie Autumn
> 
> **Content warnings: sexual harassment; implied attempted sexual assault; some gore**

The portal above disappeared, and Astoria lost sight of the slumped Professor Sinistra. Astoria threw curses on the way down, and none of them hit the way she hit the floor. Her elbows, arms, knees, and legs all mangled, but she slid to her side with her wand up. The dark room was moving, and it was impossible to see. She could feel Rabastan ahead of her, but there was nothing else to say of her surroundings. Astoria feared Professor Sinistra may have fallen in at another distance and decided against casting the Killing Curse. That decision cost her, though. She soon had to parry Rabastan’s onslaught of magic and entered a duel which she would inevitably lose. The light from his spells was blinding in the dimness, and it shot colours straight to the backs of her retinae. Duelling Rabastan was not like the fights she had overcome on the night-swept Hogwarts grounds where everyone was at one disadvantage or another. Here, she was fighting a sword with a feather.

“ _Petrificus totalus_ ,” Rabastan sneaked through the bigger curses.

 _You creep_.

Astoria dropped her wand and fell, frozen, to the floor. Unlike the paralysis he had set into her at the funeral parlour, there _was_ a way to get out of this particular bind. It was something about fully relaxing the body, yet it was impossible to relax. Rabastan’s footsteps clicked towards her head, and the leather of his whip dragged along the floor. Astoria held her breath. Any number of the Killing Curses Alecto had fired could have killed her. It seemed so unfair to have missed all those only to die now. It would have been better to die by Alecto’s grief. Rabastan didn’t have a reason like that. He just liked to watch bodies get maimed.

His voice dripped eagerly, “ _Karabastu Karabasan_ ,” and based on his smile, Professor Sinistra had been hit. Somewhere above, the professor was hallucinating in the midst of sleep paralysis. Rabastan conjured up a lamp of flickering flame and hovered over Astoria. Trembling as he scratched a red patch on his wrist, he addressed her in perfect French.

“You really fucked me up, Astoria. They say I’ll never be the same again.”

“Returning the favour,” she spat in the same tongue.

“I want your opinion on something.”

“No you don’t.”

“I do, love, I do,” Rabastan chuckled. “I want to know why Aurora left the house unlocked for me. Do you know? _No_? Can you think of any reasons?”

Astoria struggled against the spell. She knew she ought to be doing the opposite. She knew she ought to relax. But her whole body, her whole mind, was in a vicious cycle of remembering her last encounter with Rabastan and trying to react to the current one.

“You aren’t very talkative now that it’s just the two of us,” Rabastan said with a fake whine. “You know what I gathered? Aurora didn’t plan for you to come here. You interrupted us. She wanted to be alone with me…”

“Yeah, to kill you,” snarled Astoria.

“Oh? A little death never hurt…” Rabastan chuckled.

He scratched his neck, leaving nail marks and a new patch of red.

“This is extremely uncomfortable,” he laughed. “It almost seems like you enjoy watching me suffer. Is that true, Astoria? You _want_ to see me suffer? You’re secretly a _sadist_. How uncouth.”

Rabastan’s Legilimency was scratching her eyes. She looked away, but didn’t dare shut them, since he might get ideas to curse them open permanently. Rabastan rubbed his face and spoke at length in English.

“I know what’s between me and Aurora baffles you, but it’s simple. She hurt me, and I want to hurt her back. She’s hurt me for years. She’s known how much I wanted her, and she’s done nothing but reject me. I’ve tried everything. _Everything_. I’ve had it, though. The only way to have her is through the Dementor’s Kiss. And then maybe _I_ can write a book like she did, and talk about her ‘response rate.’ I guess it has to be done. You know, Muggles used ‘lobotomies’ to get their housewives under control. Same principle! They used ice picks in the brain. I had one, but I left it upstairs. Oh _yes_! See, there’s that side of you I love, Astoria. Alecto did some good in you after all! You don’t like Muggles. Our little musical activist is a _fraud_.”

“Shut up!” Astoria erupted.

Rabastan raised his arched eyebrows and cracked a smile.

“Why Astoria! When you speak, you match whatever language _I_ speak,” he cooed. “Does that mean you admire me after all? Would you like to reach a Legilimency wavelength with me again, and, ah… forego the talking? I can arrange that.”

Having been inside Rabastan’s mind before, that was one of the last things Astoria wanted. She desperately tried to distract his entertainment away from Legilimency.

“Just shut up about Muggle Studies,” she said with all of the fake teenage bitterness she could muster. “Alecto’s dead.”

It was only her emotion driving the conversation. She knew the news would not bother Rabastan or change his plans in the long run. The Carrows had been too far below his rank, and even if they weren’t, the only person Rabastan cared for was himself.

“Oh wonderful, I’ll let dear brother Amycus have you once you start to bore me,” Rabastan smiled mordantly.

“He’s dead, too,” Astoria said.

“My, my, how perfectly poetic! They left this world as they came into it!” Rabastan laughed coldheartedly. “Can’t say I’d be much disposed to follow Rodolphus to the grave — he’s a real moron… he’ll probably Splinch his dick off one day and die of embarrassment!”

He paused. His body winced again.

“You’re not laughing, _ma voyeuse_. You murdered the Carrows, didn’t you? Is that why you’re so quick to announce it? You want to make me proud, don’t you? To prove you’re a witch? Oh, what a witch you are, indeed. My little angel of death.”

Rabastan sauntered closer and placed his sweaty hands on her face.

“You have a sister, don’t you?” he asked, but he already knew all of Astoria’s answers. “That’s right, you do. I’m her boggart. Now tell me, Astoria. Why am I your sister’s boggart and not yours? Didn’t we _have_ something, you and I? I wonder what I must do to become _your_ boggart.”

Astoria couldn’t spit in his eye fast enough as he kneaded the skin of her cheeks and rubbed the edge of her bones.

“Oh, you have a nice skull,” he said, and she grimaced. “Why are you looking at me that way? I’m only saying you have a nice skull. Not everyone does, you know. What a pretty shape. I don’t often find specimens so petite. I don’t often want to be someone’s boggart this badly…”

His fingers traced the outline of her eye sockets and made them itch with the powder under his nails.

“Do you want to know who else is dead, _ma voyeuse_?” Rabastan whispered. “Go on, ask me. Yes, go on. I won’t tell you unless you ask me. I know you want to know.”

Astoria stayed silent for only a short time. She couldn’t bear to imagine who else she might have lost, and on top of that, as long as Rabastan was occupied with talking, he wasn’t doing anything more than kneading her jaw and her brow.

“Fine, Rabastan, who else is dead?”

“That’s Mr Lestrange to you,” he said, and he pinched her cheek. Another horrible itch grew from the contact with his nails. She was unable to move to scratch it.

“You know he’s calling. Your master,” she returned boldly.

Rabastan flexed his left arm and dolefully looked at the Dark Mark.

“My master? Astoria, I learnt something about my master because of you,” Rabastan crooned. “He’s no god at all. His resurrection was earthly. He doesn’t know I know… but _we_ know, don’t we, love? He must be a Horcrux user like your Quennell. He found Horcruxes necessary because he is weak enough to die. That’s what a Horcrux is, right? Oh, Astoria, you stirred a conflict within me with that information… but now I’m enlightened. We teach each other so much, don’t we?”

Rabastan pressed his hot Dark Mark against Astoria’s cheek and laughed. When he started trembling again, he backed away and rolled his shoulders. She could hear the low tone of their crack.

“You like me without a shirt, Astoria? Does this Dark Mark remind you of Draco’s? How pathetic you are. My skin _still_ smells like his to you? Do you know what it smells like to me? Aurora’s scent. Nothing else mixed in, only her. And, you know, Amortentia ought to have drawn her to me, too… it’s a very powerful potion.”

Rabastan hovered inches from Astoria. She had never seen a Dark Mark writhe so angrily before, whether in person or through memories. Not even Nott Sr’s Mark had been _emitting_ the heat. But Rabastan was far gone from the Dark Lord.

“Doesn’t this smell make you feel right at home? You must be getting _horribly close_ with Draco, then, right? Oh, but he’s not here… He’s not here, Astoria — _I_ am,” Rabastan laughed.

Astoria ignored him and said, “Horcruxes or not, if I were a Death Eater, I wouldn’t ignore the call.”

Rabastan cracked his whip on her face, and she hoped that, if nothing else, her screams would wake Professor Sinistra from the sleep paralysis before the dementor came back to her.

“If you were a Death Eater, Greengrass, you’d have to learn your bloody place. You know who just did the hard way? The man who’s been harassing my witch! _Severus Snape_! _Severus Snape is dead_!”

Rabastan made target practice out of Astoria all whilst she tried to process the news of another needless death. Snape had chosen his ways in days long gone, yet even his small actions meant that Astoria and her friends had survived… up to this point, anyway.

“ _Crucio_!”

There went all trains of thought. Astoria seared with pain so bad that she felt the need to black out, to cease herself and disconnect the feeling… But then Rabastan let her go. The relief of the body was so sudden and complete that Astoria naturally relaxed out of the Full-Body Bind Curse.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Rabastan looking all over the place. His wand whirled everywhere, as if trying to follow a mouse crawling through the walls. She did not want Rabastan to know she was free, but her wand had dropped too far away. Any move towards it would give him more than enough time to maim or kill her. Every once in a while, though, during his frantic motions, the very tip of the whip would fly above Astoria’s hand. It tempted her badly, but she knew she did not have the arm strength to pull it away from him.

Professor Sinistra was obviously back on her feet, since there was nobody else who could possibly breach the house. Rabastan tried to move the rooms surrounding them, but the unnecessary extension on his wand was not made for the task. It slowed him. He was unable to track the rooms that now loudly chafed against the outside of their current walls. Rabastan began whipping new rooms up out of nowhere. What was he so afraid of? Anything that scared Rabastan had to be good news. Astoria waited for the next opportunity. His whip flailed gracelessly, and it would come back round.

 _SMACK_.

Astoria swatted the whip’s end onto the floor like a centipede under a shoe and grabbed it tightly. Rabastan would be able to pull it from her, and of course, he held the wand end, but there were at least two spells that she knew would cast successfully when the whip-wand was in contact with the skin of both of them. One was a blood curse, and the other…

“ _LEGILIMENS_!”

Unlike when Rabastan had held the wand to her neck and inadvertently entered a wavelength with her, this time, _he_ was all hers to explore. Rabastan was thrown by the intensity of her spell, and she picked his brain with everything she had. Decades of obsession, lust, entitlement, and ill will towards Professor Sinistra oozed out, but there was a large piece that struck Astoria with independent power:-

> _Bellatrix, my sister-in-law, does not have sex with my brother. Their marriage was arranged. They are affectionate, long-time friends, and their concord with each other is enviable even in the absence of any expression of the body. The agreement to live this way was mutual between them, so long as no extramarital affairs became public. That would tarnish the names of Lestrange and Black. However, the lack of children became a source of mockery. After all, Druella Rosier only had one viable grandchild, and our own mother died before ever seeing a single one._
> 
> _Bellatrix coveted Narcissa for her son. Yet Bellatrix and Rodolphus are uninterested in each other, and her urge to have a child was not as strong as the urge to avoid the act. Years passed, and with our time in Azkaban, the issue was long forgotten._
> 
> _So why did Bellatrix spend so many months setting heavy Transfiguration upon her body? She was carrying a child she is not allowed to disclose. Unlike Rodolphus’s ordinary affair with our ally Euphemia Rowle, Bellatrix sought and bore a child with the Dark Lord._
> 
> _On the twenty-sixth of February. I prepared a room so that no sound would come from it. My brother and I knelt on either side of Bellatrix. Euphemia, though unworthy, was given the task of delivering the child safely. The Malfoys don’t know a thing, as Bellatrix had been diligent in Transfiguring her appearance. It was more than the pain of labour causing her wails, though. I was curious, and my Legilimency caught Bellatrix in her vulnerable state. Bellatrix wanted Narcissa here rather than Euphemia. She wanted Alecto Carrow rather than Rodolphus. Most of all, she wanted the Dark Lord present rather than me. Our Lord was only downstairs, and quite aware of what proceeded. Yet he cares not for the birth, and why should he? Bellatrix had won his favour at the time of the child’s conception, but she and the rest of us are not so pleasing to him anymore. We must deal with this — and the child — ourselves._
> 
> _Bellatrix knew that her presence is never missed by the Malfoys, and she spent her time in our wing of the manor with her newborn daughter. Unable to elicit even a name suggestion from the Dark Lord, Bellatrix chose the child’s name alone: Delphini Megaera_ _Riddle_. _This was not recorded, as nothing of the child is to be documented. I imagine Delphini will have to go by our own surname when she enters the world. I have seen Bellatrix pen enormous letters about the baby to Alecto that she burns upon completion, never to be sent, never to be read. She cries so much upon the parchment that I am surprised it still burns._
> 
> _Begrudgingly, Bellatrix parted with the child upon being ordered to resume her duties. Seeing that the Dark Lord is entirely detached from the child, Euphemia demanded gold as compensation for the care of Delphini. Yet again I watched my family’s vault tapped by Bellatrix. She and Rodolphus take the long way home after each search-mission, stopping at Rowle Ridge. Bellatrix for her daughter. Rodolphus for Euphemia. I am left alone. I am always alone._
> 
> _On account of the Ciel family systematically snubbing us, there are very few Lestranges left in France. It is much like the Blacks were rejected by the Greengrasses, and it all melds together in this one officious brat, Astoria. Rodolphus and I are the last Lestranges in Britain, and Euphemia will not bear him children. I have chosen Aurora Sinistra to be the fruit to our famine, but she is too proud and won’t have me. Even after Crouch and Snape are both dead, she still will not have me! And now, she has escaped my spell._
> 
> _I’ve spent too much time mulling over what Astoria Greengrass could become. She’s so much like Aurora that it’s taxing me. But she’s not the real Aurora. She’s only a mirage. A siren, simulation, decoy, distraction! The real Aurora — my Aurora — is trying to bring a room to me. I know what’s inside of it. I know Aurora’s ache for revenge. I must make more rooms. I have to twist and manipulate the space between us. Yet Aurora knows more than I do in this field of magic, and the rooms are becoming even more confusing than her delicious mind._

By using Legilimency, Astoria bought Professor Sinistra a minute of time, and large, deep cracks beat into the walls of the current prison. Astoria tried to yank Rabastan’s wand away from him, but it backfired. Being distracted by the crumbling walls round her, she had lost her hold of Legilimency, and Rabastan responded with physical force. Astoria dove on the floor for her own wand as he rose to crack his, and then felt herself sliding. With a loud snap, her half of the room split from Rabastan’s. Suddenly, Rabastan ran up to her and banged his fists on nothing, as though he were a mime.

“Astoria!”

She and the professor were now protected by a magic, translucent wall. Rabastan looked like he was in a container for a pet reptile. Astoria cried out as he raised his wand towards them, but several of his curses ended up ricocheting in his room. Some of them disappeared entirely as Professor Sinistra’s wand continued to weave.

“Professor!” Astoria exclaimed. “C-Can I help? What’s going on?”

“I would like for you to cast an incorporeal Patronus, dear,” Professor Sinistra said calmly, as though it was for nothing more than bonus credit on an assignment.

“Incorporeal?”

Professor Sinistra gave her a squeeze on the shoulder. Astoria was bewildered.

“Yes, dear, not the whole thing. Just an incorporeal one round us, in case Rabastan gets clever. Let’s think of something happy, shall we? I enjoy cutting up parchment for the underclassmen’s star charts with you, because we put on music and lock the Carrows out. Remember when you had star charts, too?”

“What?” Astoria blubbered.

Something happy? Something _happy_? Everyone was either injured or dead, and they were floating in an abyss somewhere with Rabastan Lestrange!

“I also really enjoyed our little Christmas tree. I think it had personality,” Professor Sinistra said warmly.

“Professor, I don’t understand—”

“Yes you do, dear. You’ve cast beautiful Patronuses before. Scale it back a bit. All we may need is a shield. I, however, can’t even do that much. I need you to try, Astoria,” she said.

It wasn’t any of the memories Professor Sinistra suggested, but rather her words of confidence that Astoria held on to.

“ _Expecto Patronum_!”

Streams of glittering silver-blue magic spread out from Astoria’s wand, and Astoria tried to shape them into a large, round shield around her and Professor Sinistra. It was actually working! Astoria had no idea how she was casting at a time like this, but it was working!

“Well done, Astoria!” Professor Sinistra said.

Astoria had almost forgotten that Rabastan was across them, still trembling and sending out curses. His curses came unglued, though. Another one hit a wall and came back to him, knocking him down. Professor Sinistra weaved her wand again after having paused for Astoria’s Patronus. There was great pressure round them, as if they were ascending too high on a broom ride.

“I would simply Vanish him and the room along with it if I could,” Professor Sinistra explained, “but since he fought me so vigorously once I came out of the Sleeping Spell, he has created quite the situation for himself. You see, Rabastan doesn’t know how to properly use dimensional magic. He knows how to create space and move it. But when he felt me trying to come down to rescue you, he panicked and created even _more_ space within space, in the sense of a fourth-dimension! This is beyond his grasp now. He’ll never figure this one out. Tell me, Astoria, do you know what a tesseract is?”

“Er, yes, that’s going to be on my N.E.W.T., if there still are N.E.W.T.s…” she replied. “It’s, er, a fourth-dimensional cube. So if you sort of unfold it all, it would actually be more cubes, since they all exist within each other.”

Astoria felt embarrassed that she wasn’t able to reproduce the same eloquent lesson Professor Vector had so carefully given her in class, but Professor Sinistra didn’t take offence at Astoria’s wording.

“That’s right. They all exist within each other! Now, when Rabastan started creating space in between the space _I_ was moving, he created a tesseract between the two of our spells.”

“That doesn’t sound very good,” Astoria inferred, since that was about the breadth of her understanding.

“It’s not, because I can’t Vanish anything without Vanishing all of us. We need to get rid of him before we can exit safely.”

“That doesn’t sound very good, either! Er, how are we going to get him, then?”

“Ask him! He’s the one who came up with the idea!” Professor Sinistra sang.

Astoria realised what she was maintaining a Patronus for. Rabastan had accidentally converged too much space. His half of the split room was open on the far side, fragmented into strange, geometric bits of darkness. Astoria finally understood: Rabastan’s frantic spells had combined the space holding a certain hungry dementor that had been promised food a long time ago. Its hands were reaching through the black fragments of space behind Rabastan.

Tired of excuses, the dementor slipped fully into view and hovered over Rabastan. If that dementor had been left in Voldemort’s care, after all, it likely would have had something to feed upon by now. Rabastan cowered in every corner, his sweaty, skinny, and hive-ridden body stumbling everywhere to avoid the monster’s grasp. He wasn’t giving up — not in the face of a fate so terrible.

“Why didn’t you save your precious husband if you could do this‽” Rabastan snapped loudly, trying to keep his cool as he attempted Dark magic on the dementor.

“Dementors cannot be Vanished unless the space surrounding them is!” Professor Sinistra shouted back. “And are you not discovering it’s impossible to gain control over dementors that have made up their minds? That is because they are created from the cruellest predator of all –– humans.”

Rabastan tried to manipulate the space surrounding the dementor, but he was unable to divide the space further in the puzzle he created. It would take someone far less panicked than him to send the dementor to where the witches were, and even if he figured it out, Astoria’s Patronus was ready.

“Aurora, you can’t do this!” he bellowed.

“I certainly can! If it were not for _you_ , and _your_ manipulation of my husband, and _your_ evildoing, I would have never seen my husband sent to Azkaban in the first place, much less Kissed! And you, who proclaimed your so-called love for me, would give me the same fate, all to have my body! You are the most _disgusting_ person I know! Attacking my _students_! Of course I can do this! And I must! You’ve imprisoned us all in spacetime! Oh, Rabastan, I let you into this house to kill you easily: to trap you and Vanish you! But you didn’t come to destroy Jonah’s office like I expected. You went to my bedroom! I thought you might try something there, hence the itching powder… but I wasn’t standing guard outside of it. And _now_ look where we are… You could have gone the _easy way_ , Rabastan! _You did this to yourself_!”

Rabastan was in mortal danger, and he began to shift his attention to Astoria, whom he knew that, in spite of her trials, was younger, warmer, and weaker than Aurora Sinistra. His sweaty palms pressed against the clear wall, a horrible sight.

“Astoria, you can’t let her do this to me! Don’t you want to save me‽ I’ll die if you don’t get me out, Astoria! You don’t want to see me Kissed! _We had a wavelength, Astoria_!”

Astoria was petrified at his cries. She would not betray Professor Sinistra regardless, but what Rabastan failed to realise was how much she hated him independently.

 _You hurt me so badly_ , she thought in terror as he continued to cry for her and pound the wall. _I’ll never be the same_. _You’ve hurt so many people_.

Astoria never did respond to him, and he turned back to the woman he had terrorised for decades.

“FINE THEN, YOU STUPID SLUT! I’LL GLADLY TAKE US ALL WITH THIS PLACE! THAT COSY LITTLE PATRONUS WON’T SAVE YOU FROM A BOMB, AURORA!” Rabastan threatened, more spit flying out of him as he shuddered.

“ _EVEN THEN_ , _YOU WILL DIE ALONE_!” Professor Sinistra raged.

With the Dementor’s Kiss imminent, Rabastan meant to blow the whole unit of space up. The dementor, though, was powerfully famished. It grabbed Rabastan firmly, hindering him from making the necessary motions for quite the level of destructive spell he desired. Professor Sinistra watched closely, her breath held, in wonder of whether Rabastan even _had_ a soul to consume.

Astoria couldn’t look away, either. She wanted to make sure Rabastan got his due after all of the torture she had been through. He was almost right about her liking his pain. It wasn’t that she wanted him to suffer; it was that she wanted him to _pay_.

Astoria had seen the Dementor’s Kiss second-hand through Legilimency, the memory of one of many times Professor Sinistra had lost her husband. It ranked amongst the most terrible things Astoria had ever seen, but if she’d had to see it happen to someone she didn’t exactly hate, she should have been allowed to see it for Rabastan Lestrange. In the dementor’s arms, Rabastan was growing so pale that even the red patches of his skin were turning to a sickly yellow. He had no other option.

“ _Expecto Patronum_ ,” Rabastan said.

“ASTORIA, DON’T LOOK!” Professor Sinistra screamed at once.

Astoria didn’t know what to do except obey and shut her eyes. Even if she hadn’t, though, Professor Sinistra’s hand came tightly over her face so that she might not see the events playing out before them. Something didn’t make sense, though. People who were Kissed were always silenced by the dementor’s mouth upon them, and Rabastan made such blood-curdling screams. She opened her eyes to see only the professor’s hand.

“Professor?” she dared to ask once the screams finally stopped.

“He is dead,” Professor Sinistra answered. “His own spell killed him.”

“ _What_?”

Professor Sinistra removed her hands. Astoria saw the dementor swooping about the space before them, and beneath its cloak was a huge pool of… _what the hell was that_?

She looked closer at the moving pool. It seemed like an entire person-sized bag of rice had spilled into the room. But it wasn’t anything of that sort. Astoria’s Patronus flickered out at the sight. It was insects. Little maggots. And beneath their wriggling, Astoria saw a skeleton emerge. Rabastan Lestrange had been picked to the bone in a matter of minutes. Astoria held her hand to her mouth.

“We can safely leave now,” said the professor quietly.

She began to open portals behind them. Astoria screamed in protest.

“WAIT! I need that wand!”

“What‽ Are you out of your mind‽”

“No — _It’s my wand_!”

“Astoria, that chamber is filled with maggots and the dementor—”

“That wand belongs to me!” Astoria insisted. “I Disarmed him the very first time he chased me in school! It’s worked for me ever since — the blood magic, the Legilimency wavelength, and the _Legilimens_ spell itself! You said so, too! The wand that defeated Rabastan is _mine_! Please, Professor, open up the glass between us! Just enough for the wand!”

Professor Sinistra was so keen to be out of the environment and away from the view that she listened to Astoria rather than argued. With round, black strokes, Professor Sinistra carved through both glass and space, only enough to try to retrieve the wand with magic. The paranormal maggots began to devour one another, and Astoria got a view of the long, leather braid that had conjured them. A Summoning Charm would not work on the wand itself, but as the supercilious whip had done Rabastan great disservice to his ownership of the wand, it would shame him again in death.

“ _Accio whip_!”

The leather threatened to tear from the wand on the way across the space because the wand was not meant to be Summoned, but Astoria snatched the cord through the opening, released the Summoning Charm, and pulled the item through. Silver lime and dragon heartstring, a wand hewn for Legilimency. It had killed its first owner with the same degree of violence he had loved using it for, and it yielded now to its new sorceress.

Professor Sinistra opened a rectangular, glowing portal to the side, and they stepped through it without being pursued. They were in blackness, but Astoria could see the outlines of the fantastical shape of the fateful rooms in front of them.

“ _Evanesco_ ,” said Professor Sinistra.

The entire system of rooms — the fake Azkaban maze, the room that held Rabastan’s skeleton, the split-off portion, and many rooms he had made in haste to hold off Professor Sinistra and the dementor — flickered and folded into themselves, Vanishing forever. Astoria took Professor Sinistra’s hand so as not to lose her in the darkness.

“ _Mutata room_ ,” said Professor Sinistra, and it worked properly this time.

The room they appeared in had a dirt floor but an incredible ceiling. Astoria looked upwards in awe. They were standing under an enormous, stained glass skylight with every colour of the rainbow, more intricate than both the windows of a church or the lamps of art-nouveau designers.

“Professor… what is this? There’s light above.”

“A gift from Jonah,” Professor Sinistra responded, admiring the view as well. “This was added to the Ministry of Magic building in 1910 with fake lights above to make it feel like it was not underground. When the Ministry building went through remodelling in the 1970s, they took this out because they had to start paying people to maintain it. And you know how the Ministry feels about paying people. Well, Jonah managed to finagle this out of there with a Shrinking Charm and a price. I once had big dreams to open up an observatory and make this the entrance hall, but with no observatory and nothing else to our names, we had no good place to put it, and thus began our track record of tax evasion. We learnt dimensional magic to give this piece a proper home. As you can see, there is my main portal right here.”

 _An observatory_ …

Astoria didn’t want to leave the rudimentary room on account of not having studied every last corner of the magnificent ceiling, but she took the hint and followed Professor Sinistra through another portal, which placed them near the red-curtained living area with the odd outdoor deck above. They walked out of the cavernous fireplace, up the tightly winding stairs, through the door to the deck and up again. After another hall, they were back in the still room.

Professor Sinistra gave Astoria a cream to thwart the itching powder. As Astoria was applying a Plasterleaf to her knee, she suddenly remembered that there was a war outside. Things still existed beyond the vanquishing of Rabastan Lestrange.

“With that all said and done, I am a bit upset with you,” said the Professor closely. “I can’t believe you came in here! And y-you’ve been out there fighting! You’re underage — no, forget that — you would not understand to keep yourself safe for my sake? What should I have done if I lost you out there? Or in here?”

“I… I just couldn’t sit and…” Astoria started to say, but it was hardly coming out right. “And when I saw you walk in alone, I…”

Professor Sinistra sighed.

“You are truly an astounding witch, Astoria.”

Astoria choked down the rushing emotion. If only her parents could see. She had not one, but _two_ stupid wands now, and someone who really believed in her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.  
>  The eyes lift after it and find the moon.  
> The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.  
> Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls."_  
> \- "The Moon and the Yew Tree," S. Plath


	30. Hogwarts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 30 - "Crucify" by Tori Amos
> 
> As a disclaimer, Voldemort and Harry quotes from _Dealthy Hallows_ are woven in. Also, here lies a content warning for some gore.

Astoria held her cherry wand over the still-warm silver lime and cut the leather cord away. When the attachment piece of the whip remained lodged in the handle, she tore it out with her teeth. The transmission of magic through the leather had left scars along the wand in the pattern of the braid. However, with the extremely obvious whip gone, Astoria could now use either wand as she pleased without becoming a certain target. She didn’t have time to play with her new toy, but it was already no longer as clumsy, since magic left it from the top rather than from four feet down a twisting cord. It still had a very whiplike quality to it and preferred large, sweeping motions and quick flicks compared to the scrupulous, by-the-book requirements of the cherry. It would be good to have two wands on her in case she was disarmed. Their presence on her person did not conflict with one another, so she stopped demonising herself for being able to master the wand of someone so evil. The wand chooses the wizard, and it had chosen her magic over his long before his death.

The shocking information from Rabastan had not yet sunk in. Professor Snape’s death had no time to be mourned, and Astoria Occluded the information far, far down so that Professor Sinistra might not lose herself at a time when any faltering would cost her.

Astoria was allowed to accompany Professor Sinistra back to Hogwarts for one reason only: she could cast a Patronus, and the professor could not. She did this with her cherry wand, not because she worried she would meet Rabastan’s end if she used the silver lime, but because her first wand was already used to the spell.

The hour allotted for ceasefire was already well over, and yet, incredibly, the sounds of battle were not carrying along the mountains. The skies were dark, but approaching the astronomical morning twilight. Dementors no longer guarded the forest but soared everywhere above. However, they did not descend. What was going on? Did Voldemort forget how to tell time?

There were two people running round, pounding on all the doors of Hogsmeade, Professor Slughorn and one of the Weasleys. A rather large crowd of adults were bunched in front of the Three Broomsticks, and they looked like they were ready for a fight. More continued to join them upon Slughorn and Weasley’s entreaties.

“Reinforcements, very nice,” Professor Sinistra said.

Astoria recognised several graduates from her own House, and even a few people from Draco’s notorious class, had come to help the right cause. Heather Thatcham from Daphne’s dorm waved at Astoria as she passed. Astoria wished her safe keeping.

“Aurora, m’dear!” Slughorn called once he spotted them along the road. “We are—”

“Yes, Professor, I am a bit faster than you,” Professor Sinistra said with a little bow, and they sped to Hogwarts under the swirling dementors.

They followed the road to the front of the castle and saw a large crowd emerging from the edge of the woods. Though it was much later than they had announced, the Death Eaters were coming back to Hogwarts. It looked like Professor Hagrid had been taken prisoner. How anyone had managed that was unknown.

“Professor Sinistra, er…”

“Yes, dear, I know. I’m going to make us run faster with a charm. Remember to breathe and to watch where you’re going. We’re going into the castle. _Prestissimo con moto_.”

Professor Sinistra cast the charm on Astoria first. Astoria started running uncontrollably, and her Patronus fanned out into a flag behind her. She tried to turn her body to see when Professor Sinistra would catch up, but she was moving so fast she really _did_ have to watch where she was going. She missed collision with the wild boar statues by the gates of the school and drew her breath in large huffs as she sped up to the closed doors. The charm halted before she hit the entrance. She couldn’t see Professor Sinistra, but since the Death Eaters were marching, she was too afraid to call for her. She should be coming right behind her any moment.

“ _Mobilicorpus_ ,” Professor Sinistra’s voice rang from some distance off, and Astoria rose into the air.

“Professor! What are you _doing_?” Astoria panicked, twisting against the spell as she came in line with a broken window to the Great Hall.

“I am getting you to safety,” Professor Sinistra called. “Tell everyone inside that the Death Eaters are returning. I don’t know why they’re late — it was probably a tactic to put everyone off guard. Either that or they have Harry Potter. Alert everyone, Astoria!”

“Okay, I’ll come open the door for you, Professor,” Astoria said as she approached the broken window.

“ _Don_ ’ _t_ ,” she responded sternly. “I have a job to do amongst them.”

“What? _No_! That’s too dangerous!” Astoria tried to call, but she was no longer under the cloudy night sky. Rather, the enchanted ceiling sparkled above her, and she saw her new situation. The injured and deceased were gone, apparently placed somewhere safer beyond the Great Hall. Everyone was milling about the area in a state of uncertainty until they all became very certain about staring at Astoria. As she floated in, her flailing and protests exposed her wand arm from her sleeve, and many glimpsed the marks of blood magic upon her. More than a few unfamiliar people raised their wands at her, unsure of whom she represented. For a moment, she could not think.

“The Death Eaters are coming back!” she remembered, and many who were sitting rose to their feet. “They’re coming back now, from the forest! And they’re almost here!”

Professor Vector, her Arithmancy teacher, pushed her way forward.

“How do you know, Astoria? What were you doing out there?”

Professor Vector’s familiar use of her name saved Astoria from being at wandpoint any longer. The Hogwarts force finally recognised her as someone who had spent the whole night fighting for their side.

“Rabastan Lestrange attacked me in Hogsmeade,” Astoria said without elaboration. “Where are the injured?”

“They’re in the chamber off the Hall,” Professor Vector said. “We’ve added every possible protection we could.”

Astoria’s heart ached to be at Draco’s side, but she could not go to him. Everyone armed themselves, and the best amongst them went to stand behind the doors. Astoria tried to remain in the front too, no matter how much she was pushed back by the crowd and the occasional teacher who knew that she was not of age. She heard a small commotion outside from the attackers, and it was eerie that no one had yet tried to curse the door. It was like the Death Eaters were simply standing out there, knowing that everyone on the inside was aware of them.

Less unsurprising than the silence was Voldemort’s sudden break of it. His voice Amplified through every crack of the door and even in through the broken windows of the other room. He said, quite happily, that Harry Potter was dead. It was so strange to hear a seventy-some year old man announce the death of a teenager with such pride and relish, as though Harry had somehow been a preternatural foe instead of a boy trying to survive. Astoria had no idea how Harry Potter had survived a direct Killing Curse from Voldemort in infancy nor why Voldemort had been hell-bent on killing a baby in the first place. She only wished Harry Potter could have done that trick one more time. Everyone round her had hearts and tears breaking.

“The battle is won. You have lost half of your fighters. My Death Eaters outnumber you, and the Boy Who Lived is finished,” Voldemort called, but he didn’t make any sense. The only reason he had more fighters was because he was utilising untrained, unranked Snatchers, werewolves whom he called half-breeds anyway, and dementors. The actual number of capable Death Eaters was not so impressive. He was speaking nonsense to capitalise on the effect of Harry Potter’s death. But Harry’s death didn’t mean the fight was over. A whole country could not rely on one Hogwarts seventh-year!

“There must be no more war,” Voldemort said even though he perpetuated it. “Anyone who continues to resist — man, woman, or child — will be slaughtered, as will every member of their family. Come out of the castle now, kneel before me, and you shall be spared. Your parents and children, your brothers and sisters will live and be forgiven, and you will join me in the new world we shall build together.”

Astoria cringed to hear the words ‘ _build together_ ’ coming from the wizard who was rumoured to be her illicit, time-travelling mate. It made sense now how Rabastan had come up with such a terrible idea to humiliate Astoria: _Bellatrix_ was the one who birthed Voldemort’s child. And both of the child’s parents had left her to come kill a bunch of teenagers in pyjamas. Pathetic.

Professor McGonagall had reserved her spot at the very front in spite of the scrambling, and she was their commander.

“He may be saying this to get us to exit the castle, since we have reinforced our protections,” she started strongly, but said in a much weaker voice, “If what he says is true, we must still fight, so that future generations may not experience what we have.”

Tears and shivers had already fallen across the crowd before Professor McGonagall opened the castle doors and beheld perhaps the only occasion Voldemort had spoken honest words. Harry Potter was, in fact, dead. Those closest to him screamed in pain, and Astoria swallowed a lump. She was short, and so she scanned what she could of the crowd of Death Eaters without seeing Professor Sinistra or what she was up to…

Harry Potter’s body was placed on the ground by the captive Professor Hagrid, who cried bitterly over him. Bold arguments were breaking out between Harry’s friends and Voldemort himself, whose veined, white face was even less human than Astoria imagined. Bellatrix, unmasked, clung to his right side, and Rodolphus stood ceremoniously to his left. Astoria had never had a personal run-in with Rodolphus unlike she had with the other two, but she despised the slight facial resemblance to Rabastan. Voldemort and the Lestranges knew Rabastan was missing, so why had Professor Sinistra dared to get so close to more Legilimens?

A loud noise sounded in the midst of the the arguments. Astoria craned her neck to see who had cast the first spell.

“It is Neville Longbottom, my Lord!” Bellatrix exclaimed with laughter. “The boy who has been giving the Carrows so much trouble! The son of the Aurors, remember?”

“Ah, yes, I remember,” Voldemort said cruelly.

Astoria clenched her jaw. Bellatrix saw the Longbottoms’ permanent disability as one of her crowning achievements. Horribly, without any regard to Neville’s love for his parents, Voldemort addressed Neville beseechingly:-

“But you are a _pure-blood_ , aren’t you, my brave boy?”

Astoria broke into goose pimples at the comment.

“So what if I am?” Neville responded, daring Voldemort to describe his ugly interest.

Voldemort folded his bony white hands and studied the whole of Neville, whilst Astoria could only see the top of his head from her angle.

“You show spirit and bravery, and you come of noble stock. You will make a very valuable Death Eater. We need your kind, Neville Longbottom.”

 _Noble stock_? _Valuable Death Eater_? Astoria suddenly wished to go to the back of the crowd — way, way back. She didn’t want to seem cowardly, since people were aware of her presence after she had flown in through the window, but she tried to scoot back. Alecto might have considered Astoria a failed experiment after interacting so closely with her, but if Voldemort himself was giving even _Neville Longbottom_ a chance at the Dark Mark, a Greengrass who practised Dark magic would be priceless. Neville’s response summed up the feeling quite nicely:-

“I’ll join you when hell freezes over. Dumbledore’s Army!”

Those who cheered beside Neville were hit with the Death Eaters’ Silencing Charms so that their precious Voldemort might have the last word.

“On your head, be it.”

Voldemort Summoned something out of the same window Astoria had been sent through, and he barraged Neville with dangerous taunts.

“There will be no more Sorting at Hogwarts School. There will be no more Houses. The emblem, shield, and colours of my noble ancestor, Salazar Slytherin, will suffice for everyone. Won’t they, Neville Longbottom? Neville here is now going to demonstrate what happens to anyone foolish enough to continue to oppose me.”

Voldemort cast an effortless Body-Bind on Neville and rendered him motionless. And then the most terrible thing occurred. He set the Sorting Hat upon Neville’s helpless head and ignited it. He would burn Neville alive as the Muggles had burned countless witches. Did Voldemort not realise how, with this action, he betrayed the very heritage he sought to deify? Everyone began to scream, and people poured towards Neville all whilst Professor Slughorn finally arrived with the Hogsmeade reinforcements. Ginny’s brother cast left and right, and the same giant that had helped Professor Hagrid escape on the night before Easter holidays came to fight the giants who had chosen Voldemort. Şebnem, her son, and her daughter Glenda Chittock suddenly descended from the cloud cover in independent flight. They moved lithely through the werewolves, werewolves who had been taking down dozens at a time with physical prowess that only the vampires could match.

Astoria lost sight of Neville for many moments, as he had thankfully begun to move, and so did the crowd surrounding her. Astoria at long last beheld Professor Sinistra, who had exploited her husband’s betrayal and used it for a good purpose at last. She had blended in amongst the Death Eaters, no doubt with miles-deep Occlumency, and now began to stab them in the backs. A small area cleared where she battled her way through, and Astoria regained a perfect view of Neville. From whereabouts unknown, he had acquired the Sword of Gryffindor that he, Ginny, and Luna had tried to steal back in autumn. And he took the sword to the neck of Voldemort’s familiar snake. The head of the creature eclipsed the light of curses, and at its death, Voldemort cried more than he ever would have for his own neglected child.

A Shield came from the crowd to try to protect Neville from Voldemort’s booming curses. Astoria must get closer — a simple Shield would not stop Voldemort forever, especially now that the fight between him and Neville was so personal. It was difficult, though, with the ground shaking and a whole army of centaurs coming from the woods, shooting arrows… and then Astoria saw him. As Voldemort was forced to contend with the onslaught of the Hogwarts faculty, Rodolphus Lestrange took up the task of murdering the child of the Aurors he had destroyed. The Shield over Neville had been jostled away, but regardless, no Shield would protect Neville from the curse Rodolphus planned. Astoria aimed her wand at the elder Lestrange brother, but too many innocent people were near him for her skill level, and then…

“ _Æfnenne beċeorfenne_!”

Astoria screamed, and in spite of how unwise it was to do on the battlefield, shut her eyes for one hideous moment. For just as the snake had died, so too went Rodolphus Lestrange. Professor Sinistra stepped in the abundant space between his curly, black-haired head and his fallen body and dared the Death Eaters to try to fight her.

Astoria felt sick at the sight, but there was no time to feel sick, and she cursed her way through Snatchers and Death Eaters, who were moving into the castle on account of the giants fighting outside. Professor Vector’s comment about the protections over the injured seemed not enough. Curses blew parts of the castle to bits, and chunks went flying over the heads of House-elves, who were throwing magic-laden knives at Death Eaters. Doors, stairs, windows, and statues were all being destroyed and taking more injuries with them. The Great Hall, only one room away from Draco, had Voldemort himself.

Voldemort was going undefeated, but his followers were not. Professor Sinistra had taken up the task of using dimensional magic to encapsulate any dementor that managed to make it into the building, and her vampire allies proceeded to rip the creatures apart with their long-nailed fingers, turning them back into mist. The Great Hall was like a rough sea, and Astoria could not hope to make it through with only a paddleboat. Her body had long been tired from fighting, and Dark magic was draining her further. She resorted to Stunning Spells as she ran along the wall, trying to stay out of Voldemort’s sight, for to be seen was to be slain. Voldemort did not pay any mind to her, fortunately, but what he did see was that Draco’s parents had defected from his side. Narcissa and Lucius were desperately screaming for Draco as they ran, but they would never find him where they looked, since he was hidden amongst the injured. The only thing the Malfoys succeeded in was drawing attention to themselves, and even over the heads of two powerful teachers, Voldemort’s ire was about to reach them. Between his current duel, he managed to sling a sparking curse at the Malfoys’ heads. Her pale face gone red, Narcissa shouted, and she caught the curse with a single, bare hand and flung it into the floor, where it cracked it so hard it made a funnel of wood. Astoria Banished her way through people, trying to get to the couple, knowing that Lucius was useless without his wand, and that Voldemort would have no trouble hitting them on the second try.

After a final shove through the crowd, Astoria made it to the Malfoys without them realising who she was, or that she had deliberately come to them. But Voldemort saw her between the heads of his opponents, and knew by the way she ran in line with the Malfoys that she was trying to intercept him. It made it all the more interesting for him when his red eyes traced the blemishes of blood magic upon her arm. Astoria hated the bemused hitch she saw in his breath.

“ _Protego Nidhogg_!”

Narcissa and Lucius startled terribly behind her at the sound of the Dark incantation, and Lucius grabbed her shoulder, thinking she was an enemy. But when the Malfoys realised that they were on the _inside_ of the shield, they went quiet. Now chillingly engrossed, Voldemort sent curses that managed to crack even this spell’s dome. Astoria was not having it. She screamed out all of her energy, and not one, but three dragons unfurled from her Shield, and they arched over the crowd to gnaw chunks of the stone wall out, catching a Killing Curse inbound for the Malfoys just in time. It felt somewhat good, and if her magic were not so exhausted, Astoria would have liked to see Voldemort’s distorted facial expression again. A member of the Order had stepped in to fight Voldemort, and it gave Astoria the diversion she needed to get away. The Malfoys, a bit stupidly, were trying to get out of the Shield to look for Draco independently. She shrunk the Shield’s expanse to make the idiots realise they had to follow her. She broke the Shield shortly before making it to the door at the far side of the Hall.

“He’s back there!” she shouted, but it was muffled by the chaos.

The Malfoys had at least read her lips, because they barrelled through the door and into the corridor, from where they entered the very same room the Triwizard Champions had first convened in all those years before.

“He’s there — that’s him,” Astoria said breathlessly, and the Malfoys bolted over to the general direction in which she waved. “I put charms on him so he wouldn’t be recognised. He’s unconscious. That’s him.”

This entire time, the Malfoys had said nothing to her. Not a word of thanks, not even a word of _acknowledgement_ of who she was. Quite frankly, Astoria was tired of the sight of them already. Impressed with herself, though not recklessly so, she ran back to the Great Hall. Draco would be safe there with Narcissa’s ability to volleyball curses. Astoria wasn’t able to use wandless magic like the powerful witches she knew, but she could channel her anger well, and the sight of the fiend Bellatrix attacking Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger, and Luna Lovegood outside the corridor really did the trick. Marco Amaya, from Ginny’s class, Theodore Nott, who sought revenge, and Tracey Davis, who had enough of this nonsense, joined Astoria in casting at Bellatrix, but Ginny’s mother was at the forefront, and she forcibly pushed all seven of them out of the way of her duel.

“No! Get back! _Get back_! She is _mine_!”

The crowds were beginning to dissipate from deaths and injuries, and frightened spectators huddled by the walls. Mrs Weasley’s and Bellatrix’s spells ravaged the Great Hall all whilst Voldemort continued to fight the professors and the Order member. Having been pushed back, Ginny stood with her eyes alight and her mouth open in terror, with only her mother’s safety on her mind.

Bellatrix laughed even whilst thick in a duel, “What will happen to your children when I’ve killed you? When Mummy’s gone the same way as Freddie?”

“You — will — _never_ — touch — our — children — again!” Mrs Weasley screamed through each slash of her wand.

Astoria inhaled and held her breath. A black curse from Bellatrix had snagged like fabric upon Mrs Weasley’s wand, and from beneath it came a glowing cerise curse Mrs Weasley had conjured for one purpose. At her motion, the whole disc of magic flew cleanly under Bellatrix’s arm and broke like glass upon her upper breast. Bellatrix had been smiling because she had never, never counted on this. Her eyes bulged from her heavy lids and she gagged for air, one last time, before falling.

 _What will happen to_ your _child, Bellatrix?_ Astoria wondered quietly, staring in cold silence at the form of the last Lestrange’s body whilst the crowd erupted in cheers. Their cheering was stupidly premature. Astoria felt Voldemort’s own Occlumency break just like the curse upon Bellatrix’s chest, and his rage howled through every body.

Professor McGonagall, Professor Slughorn, and even the powerful Order wizard flew through the air all at once, and Voldemort locked on Mrs Weasley. Ginny screamed, and a Shield whisked through the space, drawing Voldemort’s eye just enough for Mrs Weasley to grab her daughter and fall into the crowd alongside the wall.

Harry Potter appeared out of thin air, causing great joy and confusion. Hermione Granger and Luna Lovegood jumped up at the sight of the miracle.

“ _What_ in the world…?” Tracey Davis beamed. “He’s _alive_! He wasn’t killed!”

Harry and Voldemort were taking up quite a bit of space with their encounter, and everyone remaining in the Great Hall scooted as far away as possible. Astoria first saw the back of Harry’s head, then Voldemort’s popping veins, then Harry’s, then Voldemort’s. She felt the whole thing was utterly silly. There were a thousand people simply watching Harry and Voldemort contredanse. Pansy Parkinson had said, “But Potter’s _there_ , right _there_ ,” and Astoria thought the very same thing of _Voldemort_. With her eyes on his white head, her wand began to lift…

“I don’t want anyone else to try to help! It’s got to be like this. It’s got to be _me_ ,” Harry said as though he had caught her sentiment, and it startled her.

 _Just who does he think he is_?

Astoria said a very foul word in her head that she hoped Potter would pick up on, too. They had slinked away from her perfect shot… Nobody was _doing_ anything! Voldemort was _right there_!

“Who are you going to use as a shield today, Potter?” Voldemort taunted.

“Nobody. There are no more Horcruxes. It’s just you and me,” said Harry, and Astoria startled at the word.

 _Horcruxes_! So Voldemort _had_ been a Horcrux user like Astoria’s own haunt, Quennell. Harry’s words barely made sense, as he implied that Voldemort had managed to make more than one! Had Voldemort come back to life by way of a Horcrux? Is that why he was alive and could travel as he pleased, whilst Quennell remained trapped in an ethereal state, confined to the forest? None of it was clear to Astoria, but it thrilled her. If Harry bothered to fight Voldemort, that meant that Horcruxes _could_ be destroyed, and Astoria doubted Harry had managed to procure the needed dose of basilisk venom to do the deed. This was incredible news. Astoria was rife with so many ideas of how to save her family from the Horcrux’s influence in their bloodline that she mentally left the room. She had to get back to Quennell Park, and tell Quennell… She could see the memory of his eyeless face so clearly, but she had no idea what he would say. Oh, Quennell, would he accept his fate? Would he really forego resurrection to pass on?

“What childish dream is this?” Voldemort snarled, and Astoria felt the words quite closely even though they did not pertain to her. Quennell might have put on a show of tears just to trap Astoria in the same curse that had taken her ancestors in the generations between them. Her fantasy fell away, and she once more became audience to Voldemort and Harry’s confrontation. Astoria had no idea how the conversation had got to this point, but Harry spoke up about Professor Snape:-

“Severus Snape wasn’t yours. Snape was Dumbledore’s, Dumbledore’s from the moment you started hunting down my mother. And you never realised it because of the _thing_ you can’t understand. You never saw Snape cast a Patronus, did you Riddle? Snape’s Patronus was a doe, the same as my mother’s, because he loved her for nearly all of his life, from the time when they were children. You should have realised; he asked you to spare her life, didn’t he?”

Astoria was gobsmacked with the information. The doe that had followed Professor Sinistra as the dementors descended upon Hogwarts had been her dear friend Snape’s. If she heard Harry correctly, Snape was not only a dear friend to Professor Sinistra but a double-agent for the Order.

“He desired her, that was all. But when she had gone, he agreed that there were other women, and of purer blood, worthier than him,” Voldemort answered, seeming to search for another betrayer, Professor Sinistra, as he said this. However, he was unable to find her in his face-to-face apprehension with Harry Potter, who continued to mock him.

Voldemort broke angrily, “It matters not whether Snape was mine or Dumbledore’s, or what petty obstacles they tried to put in my path! I crushed them as I crushed your mother, Snape’s supposed great _love_!”

The two foes then began to argue about wand ownership. It seemed such a strange topic to discuss when they were on the cusp of a duel, but Astoria supposed wand ownership _was_ important, considering that the silver lime wand clung forlornly to her side, hoping to be used for powerful, but not sadistic, magic.

“I killed Severus Snape three hours ago, and the Elder Wand, the Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny is truly mine! Dumbledore’s last plan went wrong, Harry Potter!”

 _Three hours ago_. If Professor Sinistra was anywhere near, Astoria hoped she would be able to take the news steadily. Astoria wished she was by her side, but there was no way to move to go look for her. She scanned the crowd unsuccessfully, worrying, and at the same time wondering why Voldemort was under the impression the Elder Wand was a real thing. Harry Potter validated the idea, but it was so fanciful! Astoria stood on tiptoes to study their wands. Voldemort’s wielded Professor Dumbledore’s wand, recognisable by spherical adornments but otherwise not so imposing. Anyone could hew a wand out of elder, but that didn’t make it the “Elder Wand.” After all, the Carrows had bragged of a Thestral tail core, but theirs had been homemade. Astoria’s confusion troughed even deeper when she indisputably identified Draco’s wand in Potter’s hand. Dozens of scenarios fell upon her wrinkled brow: Was Potter the one who had knocked Draco unconscious? No — Draco had lost his wand before that, in some terrible incident at his house. So that fateful Easter holiday was one of the times Harry Potter had got away from the Death Eaters, then. If Potter had been Disarmed, and Draco had been forced to follow orders, he had every right to Disarm Draco in turn. But because Draco’s life had been put at risk over multiple Disarmings, it became a bit hard for her to root for Potter as he continued to draw out the conversation with Voldemort. That was not to say she was rooting for Voldemort. She was simply tired of hearing them nag each other and hold everyone else at a standstill.

“Dumbledore’s last plan hasn’t backfired on me at all. It’s backfired on you, Riddle,” said Potter. “That wand still isn’t working properly for you because you murdered the wrong person. Severus Snape was never the true master of the Elder Wand. He never defeated Dumbledore.”

“He killed—”

“Aren’t you listening? Snape never _beat_ Dumbledore! Dumbledore’s death was _planned_ between them!” Potter announced not only to Voldemort, but to the amazed crowd surrounding them. “Dumbledore intended to die undefeated, the wand’s last true master! If all had gone as planned, the wand’s power would have died with him, because it had never been won from him!”

“But then, Potter, Dumbledore as good as gave me the wand!” Voldemort said with amusement. “I stole the wand from its last master’s tomb! I removed it against its last master’s wishes! Its power is _mine_!”

“You still don’t get it, Riddle, do you? Possessing the wand isn’t enough! Holding it, using it, doesn’t make it really yours. Didn’t you listen to Ollivander? ‘The wand chooses the wizard.’ The Elder Wand recognised a new master before Dumbledore died, someone who never even laid a hand on it. The new master removed the wand from Dumbledore against his will, never realising exactly what he had done, or that the world’s most dangerous wand had given him its allegiance… _The true master of the Elder Wand was Draco Malfoy_.”

Astoria fell cold, and her eyes hardened. She did not care about the wizards’ fight any longer. “You murdered the wrong person,” Harry had said. “You murdered the wrong person.” Harry Potter had practically handed Voldemort a reason to murder Draco, complete with a vivid explanation.

 _Some war hero Potter is_.

Astoria quietly and carefully fell away from the crowd of spectators. She inched her way back into the corridor from where she had come. Behind her she heard Voldemort say, “After I have killed you, I can attend to Draco Malfoy.”

 _Over my dead body_. _Over my cold, dead body_. _You have used him for the last time_.

Astoria entered the room of the injured, and her eyes were aflame over the form of her wizard. Draco, through Narcissa’s magic, was awake, but still under the hasty disguise. There was no time for a reunion. They had no seconds to spare.

“You must leave out the back,” Astoria said firmly to the family before Draco could even greet her. “Riddle thinks Draco owns his wand and plans to kill him. _You have to go now_. Use the Prefects’ curfew route.”

“I wha—?” Draco started, but his mother yanked him with extreme force.

The Malfoys ran past the other injured, who had all been glaring at them. Draco’s parents were too desperate to need further explanation from Astoria and reached top speed in a matter of seconds, but the moment they were out of sight, Draco started screaming.

“SHE HAS TO COME WITH US! SHE _HAS_ TO! NO — I WON’T GO WITHOUT HER! DON’T YOU _HEAR_ ME‽ _I WON’T GO_!”

Astoria ran to follow them, to follow his voice. The Malfoys neither shunned nor encouraged her but kept their eyes out for danger in the corridor. Even though both arms of both parents were on him, Draco shoved through, and grabbed Astoria’s dirty hands, welcoming her with a look she had needed this whole accursed night. They ran, together, as a loud blast sounded from back in the Great Hall. Astoria expected full commotion to break loose, so when there wasn’t one, she and Draco shared a curious look. Before they knew it, there were cheers louder than the entire battle had been.

Narcissa slowed, and looked at her son, then her husband. Then, for the first time, she acted like Astoria was actually there. They _all_ slowed, for the noise was too loud to have come from Voldemort’s side — which had largely consisted of magical creatures and humans who hardly knew him. This was a noise of elation, not of brutality.

“I’ll go see,” Astoria announced resolutely.

“Astoria!” Draco gasped, but his worries were unfounded. He was looking at the Foe-Shard she had lent him on his wrist. Voldemort was not there. They already knew. It was just that it seemed too good to be true.

“I will go see. I’ll be right back,” she insisted.

The Malfoys, of course, let her be the one to check without protest. Draco followed her about halfway down the corridor, at which point she gave him a look and he stopped, since he was unarmed. At the last corner, Astoria peeked her nose. The first thing she saw was the most welcome sight of all. Professor Aurora Sinistra stepped up to Voldemort’s body, now a corpse, and wiped off her muddy shoes against his face, leaving the ridges of her boots in a pattern against his scaly skin.

Immediately thereafter, the professor started prancing all over the place, binding up remaining Death Eaters with tight, unbreakable curses. Dawn had arrived, and it cast brilliant colours across her robes, even through the stains. She weaved her way through all of the people who had forgotten that there were still Dark wizards amongst them, all trying to escape in the hubbub. Professor Sinistra would not let them go. She already had a pile of prisoners-to-be. Astoria was uncertain as to what she should tell the Malfoys when she turned back round… “Voldemort’s dead, but stay clear of Professor Sinistra?”

All she came up with was, “He’s gone for good this time.” They all three knew which ‘he’ she meant. Lucius suddenly broke with a noise, and he swooped Narcissa into his arms and kissed her deeply. It wasn’t the loveliest sight to see, but it meant their family was free at last. Draco ran up to Astoria with the brightest smile. She reached her arms to him and wrapped herself all up.

“I would like to change your hair back, Draco.”

“What, auburn doesn’t suit me?” he said, nuzzling above her ear.

“Not at all, and I forgot your eyebrows in the first place, so they’re still blond!”

She drew back a little and poked the mole off of his nose playfully, then removed the Colour-Changing Charm from his hair. It went back to the platinum blond that had drawn her eye four years ago. His clothes could stay charmed; they were irrelevant to his familiarity and torn anyway. He was sweaty in them, but so was she, and she didn’t mind playing with his hair. The feelings of relief were more than happiness. Up to this point, their entire relationship had been stalked by Voldemort, the Death Eaters, and blood purity. That was gone, never to come back. Draco drew Astoria back at arm’s length, with his hands on her shoulders, just to get a good look at her. She renewed the smile that had never even left her face. He was so happy. With his arms out, he beheld something new about himself. Astoria watched closely, relishing every miniscule change on his face when he realised that the Dark Mark was gone from his skin. He gawked at her, at the small scar left by the spell, and at his parents.

“Mother! Mother, look! It’s not there anymore!” he exclaimed, holding out his arm for her to see.

Narcissa, for once, showed her teeth when she smiled. Lucius gave Draco a serious nod, and quietly looked at his own arm. Astoria peeked at it, too. Where Lucius’s Mark had once been tinged black, it was now red and pink. It was distorted, but the image was still present. A skull and snake. However, Draco’s, Astoria thought proudly, was unrecognisable. It might have been a mere cauldron burn. He would not carry the symbol that ruined his adolescence into adulthood. Lucius and Narcissa pondered the discrepancy together, with Lucius first worrying that Voldemort would return again, but the notion was dismissed when they saw old Aurors moving the cold corpse of Voldemort into another room in the corridor.

“It must be that yours was there longer,” Narcissa surmised, and Lucius was also satisfied with that explanation, but Draco grinned and hugged Astoria again.

“You did this, didn’t you?”

“Well, scribbling on it with ink only did so much,” she shrugged.

“Oh, we can still play that game without the Mark, Astoria,” he whispered in her ear, and she turned very, very red. Draco scooped her up into his arms.

“Where are you _going_ , Draco?” Lucius demanded, making an enormous deal of ignoring Astoria’s displays of affection all over his son.

“Great Hall. I smell food,” Draco said. “Figure we’d have a hot meal before we get arrested by Sinistra.”

“Draco, really,” Astoria said.

She also smelled a delicious trail of food, but the pleasantness was interrupted by more people barrelling through, with the Mobilised corpse of Bellatrix Lestrange in the midst of them. Narcissa hid her face in her husband’s shoulder at the sight of her sister. Lucius ran his hands through her hair and said something gently to her. Like Flora and Hestia had not mourned Amycus and Alecto, Draco wasn’t sad for his aunt. However, he was sad because his mother was so full of bitterly mixed emotions. Narcissa took a deep breath, coming to peace with what she had seen, and they ultimately entered the Great Hall.

The food being served was apparently what had been scheduled for breakfast, and there was no better time to serve it than now. Draco set Astoria back down on her feet. The tables were back in the Hall, and everyone sat wherever they pleased. The Malfoys took in the sight but seemed unsure of what to do. Narcissa spotted an empty spot towards the end of the nearest table and waved her son on to go eat. Astoria plopped into the seat next to him, and plates slowly started to appear with food. Draco’s parents looked over their shoulders, afraid to be there, but Narcissa took a seat on the other side of Draco, and Lucius huddled next to her. They did not take breakfast.

Astoria nibbled some jamless toast, thankful for anything, and she saw everyone crying with tears of joy and tears of loss. Things started to settle in for her, too. Voldemort and the Lestranges were dead, but they had taken a lot of people with them first. Uncle Faunus, Renshaw, Gracie, and Bob Page. Nymphadora Tonks, Remus Lupin. Bathsheba Babbling, Charity Burbage, Severus Snape, Dumbledore. Fred Weasley and Cedric Diggory, too. Those were just the ones Astoria knew. She didn’t want any more news, but the swell of emotion was making it hard to simply sit and eat. Professor Sinistra had warned her to control this, and she tried very hard to. There was so much loss. Draco touched her hand.

“Legilimency, isn’t it?” he said knowingly. “You’re picking up on something.”

Astoria nodded, “I think so. There’s… a lot.”

“It is a lot,” Draco said, looking at the crowd, apart from them and yet aware. Then his eyes were on her again, and he spoke in a brighter tone. “The news will reach your family, wherever they are. They’ll come back. Wait till they find out you’re alive!”

Amazingly, Astoria hadn’t even thought about that yet. There was so much going on throughout the night that she hadn’t thought of her overarching situation with her family. She had never been more independent in her life, but she had also never felt lonelier without them. Her family, though, would look at the blood magic set upon her arm the same way the Malfoys scrunched their nose at it as she ate, and those two _liked_ the Dark arts. Everyone was quick to make judgements without bothering to care how her arm had got that way in the first place. How would she ever explain Rabastan to her family? How would she relate _any_ of this? Her eyes kept tracing the parts of Draco’s sleeves that had been singed off. He had the smell of smoke on him, and first-aid ointments.

 _He_ ’ _ll understand_.

He caught her staring at him. Even with thousands of things to look at in the celebration, she kept returning to Draco’s face. Given the circumstances, they were both eating unlike how they had been raised, and Draco had some crumbs on his mouth. He grinned and wiped them off with his sleeve. She had never seen him like this. It was somehow special.

“You didn’t have a full dinner last night after attacking Amycus in class, did you?” he said. “Eat some more.”

Astoria gobbled up strawberry oatmeal. Sleep pressed her eyes, but she wanted to identify all her friends amongst the standing, and suddenly the oatmeal did not taste as good. Mercifully, she saw Tracey and Montel Davis hugging their parents, with Maxwell and the rest of the Lazenby clan close by.

“There’s Theodore,” Draco pointed out with relief in his voice. “Sheesh, I know I said he needed a haircut, but that wasn’t what I meant.”

“He’ll charm a whole terrier back on his head,” Astoria smiled at the sight of his buzzed head nodding in conversation with Heather Thatcham, Millicent Bulstrode, and Michael Corner, the D.A. Ravenclaw.

Anthony Goldstein and Swati Pevekar from Astronomy were talking to Ernie Macmillan and his parents. Hannah Abbott was holding both hands with Luna Lovegood, who comforted her. Ginny Weasley had reunited with Harry Potter, who was in the midst of a swarm of people. Astoria wondered if he was going to return Draco’s wand, and why he had announced Draco’s ownership of the so-called Elder Wand so quickly. It was great that Potter had killed Voldemort, but it still sat wrong that he had said “You murdered the wrong person.”

Draco followed Astoria’s gaze with a dash of insecurity. She nearly chuckled at how transparent he was. He didn’t want her to swoon over the hero, Harry Potter. In fact, the sight of Harry ruined Draco’s hitherto pleasant attitude.

“He’s not so great, I’ve found,” said Astoria, having made the opinion herself without Draco’s bias influencing her. She wasn’t going to go into detail about the “wrong person” comment, though. Any show of animosity towards Potter would be an easy trip to Azkaban.

“Yeah. And he still has my wand,” Draco said fractiously. “I wonder what he’s thinking now, knowing that _my_ wand’s the one that killed the Dark Lord instead of his. Makes you wonder. What was that you were saying about the Dark Lord coming to kill me, anyway? When we all panicked? Something about me owning the _Dark Lord_ ’ _s_ wand? That doesn’t make much sense…”

“It didn’t make much sense,” Astoria agreed with a sigh. “Gosh, let me think. Er, well the night… with Dumbledore…”

Draco nodded gravely and looked at the table.

“Well, he said something about you Disarming Professor Dumbledore, so even though the wand was buried with him, it technically belonged to you. I suppose Riddle stole Dumbledore’s wand, and it didn’t work for him the way he felt it should because it was yours,” Astoria said, though she felt even more confused saying it aloud.

The Malfoys had been eavesdropping on their conversation the whole time, but now they outright stuck their noses in. Narcissa asked with wide eyes, “Is that why he was going to come for Draco? Is that what you had been _trying_ to say when you ran in?”

 _I didn_ ’ _t exactly have time to tell the whole story, Narcissa_.

“Yes, he said something to Harry like ‘after I kill you, I’ll attend to Draco,’ so I came in, but thank goodness it’s all over,” Astoria answered.

“Yes, thank goodness,” Narcissa said.

Lucius stroked the growing stubble on his usually clean face. The war had _just_ ended, and he was already scheming something.

“Draco,” he said, “Potter therefore has not one, but two of your wands…”

Draco’s eyebrows raised, and there was something set in his jaw, but Astoria rolled her eyes. None of the Malfoys had wands, and it was going to take more time than money to convince Harry Potter to give his rival a single wand at all.

“Draco no longer owns Professor Dumbledore’s wand, so you will not need to try to claim it,” came a familiar, shrewd voice.

Lucius Malfoy’s rump nearly left his seat at the sound of Professor Sinistra, and Narcissa remained skittish. Astoria, though, dove into her arms.

“As Harry announced to Riddle, he was too late to try to win ownership of that wand from Draco. Its allegiance lay with Harry, who Disarmed him.”

Astoria was onto her and looked up at her with pursed lips. With this information, Professor Sinistra was trying to keep Astoria from hating Harry Potter and simultaneously dissuading the Malfoys from causing more problems.

Though the part of Harry and Voldemort’s conversation that Astoria had missed somewhat lightened the crime, she was still adamant that Harry should not have even brought up Draco’s name to Voldemort. Voldemort had been putting Draco in danger and emotional turmoil for far too long. He lived in his house, and Harry Potter knew that. She ultimately found him to be a helpful, but unpalatable, hero in this war. Unlike Draco’s history with him, though, Astoria was quite capable of keeping that opinion to herself. She could already picture her parents trying to invite Harry Potter to an Equinox or a Christmas…

“Ah, I thought I saw you join _our_ group, Sinistra,” Lucius Malfoy remarked in a low, arctic voice. “Many were pleased.”

“I was pleased to deceive so many,” Professor Sinistra said venomously. “Rest assured, I never had business with you, Malfoy. Draco is a dear student of mine, and your defection from the Death Eaters is commendable.”

Lucius gulped and hid in his hair, knowing better than to look a Legilimens in the eye. He did not want her congratulations; he wanted to be as far from her as possible.

“Malfoy,” Professor Sinistra persisted, but she was looking at the enchanted ceiling rather than him, “Please tell me where Severus lies. That is why I impinge.”

Astoria looked from Professor Sinistra’s solemn gaze, to Lucius’s nervous stare, to Narcissa’s comforting hand on her husband, to Draco’s confusion. Lucius cleared his throat.

“I am not sure. However, the Dark Lord was stationed within the Shrieking Shack, and the last time I saw Severus Snape was there.”

“Thank you,” Professor Sinistra said quietly.

She released herself from Astoria’s lonely hold and started scurrying away. Astoria wanted to sit with Draco, but she didn’t want to sit with his parents anymore, and they were all inseparable. She touched Draco’s shoulder, and he rubbed his face and nodded in understanding. She set off after Professor Sinistra by herself.

“Professor!” she called. “Professor Sinistra!”

Professor Sinistra turned round in the blood-stained Entrance Hall. Her eyes were as dewy as the broken window panes. The relief of Voldemort’s death waned in the waves of tragedy.

“You can’t do this alone, Professor,” Astoria said.

Professor Sinistra drew a deep, soundless breath. Her shoulders were high.

“You are right, Astoria,” she said. “I cannot.”

And so Astoria and Professor Sinistra went back the way they came, down to Hogsmeade, where at the end of town was a haunted little house with termite-eaten wood, bundimuns in the foundation, and the heavy smell of earth’s reclamation. They broke in easily but navigated it carefully. Professor Sinistra cast Hardening Charms on the floorboards as they walked so that they would not cave. The bottom level was all in shambles, and Professor Snape’s body could be anywhere, in any state. But Professor Sinistra and Astoria looked for him the manual way out of respect.

They roamed upstairs, and at the top of the creaky landing, both witches caught a powerful scent of blood. Professor Sinistra held a hand up to hold Astoria in place, and then she traced it, palm up, back in front of her. Astoria watched her fingers curl over magic that she herself could not feel. Professor Sinistra disappeared into a room with a door ajar, and the only thing Astoria could see of it was peeling wallpaper in the professor’s wandlight. Astoria stood perfectly still, afraid of the sight based on the smell. But she heard Professor Sinista’s wand swishing, and soft cries began to haunt the house rather than shrieks. Astoria crept to the door. There they were, the two Slytherins who had been disgraced and re-favoured so many times by the public that their reputations had stopped concerning them long ago. There was blood everywhere, but Professor Sinistra had a Cleaning Charm well underway to provide herself a place to sit. Professor Snape was in a sad, slumped position against the far wall. He had a gruesome wound upon his throat which had no doubt been his end. Astoria missed him already, and her eyes stung for the thousandth time. Why couldn’t he have died with a Killing Curse? Why had he been made to suffer out slowly?

Astoria felt immature, for it would be terrible of her to cry louder than Professor Sinistra, who had lost her dear friend. But a wave of memories was crashing upon her — her adventure with Rhiannon in Knockturn Alley to procure Snape a copper cauldron, her meetings with him about the O.W.L.s, the Doppelvanga saying in his nasally voice, “What a mess!” Professor Snape had done the most he could to help the students during the Carrows’ presence, which admittedly wasn’t enough, but he couldn’t give himself away to Voldemort. And it was all for Voldemort to kill him anyway…

Based on Professor Snape’s position, the undersides of his hands on the floor had turned violet-red, the colour Astoria had seen in her cousin Renshaw’s body. Professor Snape’s eyelids had already been set with death and could not be closed with the hand, and Professor Sinistra wept upon his face as she charmed them to sleep. She brushed his hair tenderly away from his wounds, and set careful magic upon his neck, cleaning him as she went. Astoria stood by helplessly, but it was her presence that was needed, not her help. Professor Sinistra set a single, mournful kiss upon his forehead. They had been in love. It was merely not the love people assumed. It was a companionate love, a love of paramount understanding between two people. Their hearts would always rest elsewhere, and that was something understood between them, too.

Astoria saw Professor Snape’s wand on the floor, picked it up, and cleaned it. Professor Sinistra similarly used magic to get his rigid arms to move, and crossed them upon his chest before charming him into a gentle float. They began to descend the stairs like a funeral procession, with Professor Snape in between them. Everyone else in Hogsmeade had gone up to the castle. They alone walked away from it, to the very edge of the mountains where trees grew and a wrought-iron gate opened into Hogsmeade Graveyard. Astoria followed Professor Sinistra to an empty corner of the grounds. Professor Sinistra seemed to be counting her steps under her breath, and then she stopped. The cold wind blew Professor Snape’s hair back in his face, and Astoria carefully moved it away. She missed him, she did miss him. She could hear him saying, “And just _what_ do you think you are doing, Miss Greengrass?” as she fought his silly hairstyle through the wind.

“Astoria, dear, may I use your grimoire?” Professor Sinistra asked.

Astoria stalled for a moment. That’s right, she had her grimoire on her! It had been bumping against her side all night. She didn’t know what she had thought it was… she was the one who had put it there. But she couldn’t figure out what Professor Sinistra needed something like that for.

“It’s, er, full of Dark spells and notes, Professor…”

“As grimoires are,” Professor Sinistra said. “I only need one page. Might I use the back inner sleeve? It _is_ my book you stole, after all.”

Astoria’s face flushed with shame. She had been foolish to think she could get anything past Professor Sinistra. She hoped the professor wouldn’t flip through the pages and read the sort of things she had practised in there. She rummaged through her robes to get the Sticking Charm off of the book and handed it over.

“Keep him above ground,” Professor Sinistra instructed, and Astoria picked up the charm to hold Professor Snape.

Astoria watched her mentor carefully. Professor Sinistra held the book in one hand, open on the last page of text, which was a closing summary about Sagittarius. With her wand, Professor Sinistra drew out the ink from these pages, and suspended it to float in droplets whilst she turned to the blank page at the back. Professor Sinistra dabbed the tip of her wand into the floating droplets of ink and used it as a quill, sweeping drawings of strange symbols across the page. She then laid the book with reverence upon the ground too hallowed for the spells Astoria had placed in the other pages. Astoria was fidgeting with embarrassment. From the ground, dirt started flying up and outwards in perfect lines, and an arithmanceutical sigil began to glow a ghostly green in the grass. And then, with flame, a catafalque materialised before them. Professor Sinistra took Professor Snape from Astoria’s care and laid him upon it. Astoria noticed something drop in the exchange. It was a bloodstained paper, but she picked it out of the grass unafraid. It was old stationery, and it was terribly hard to read. All Astoria could make out through the blood was:-

> _ever have been friends with Gellert_
> 
> _mind’s going, personally_
> 
> _Lots of love,_
> 
> _Lily_

Tucked and folded inside the protection of the letter was something even more precious, a photograph of the letter’s author. Lily, Harry Potter’s mother, had long, red hair and a lively smile. Her arms were reaching to something off the paper, which had been torn away. The photograph was old, and Lily was hardly in her twenties. Professor Sinistra saw Astoria studying it and peeked over.

“Ah, there she is,” Professor Sinistra said with a sad smile. “I am certain Severus is looking for her now, to say he is sorry for being so presumptuous and racist.”

Astoria looked at her quizzically and surrendered the papers. In turn, Professor Sinistra lifted Astoria’s grimoire out of the grass and gave it back to her. She then looked the letter over and spoke of the witch in the photograph.

“Severus and Lily were especially close in school. They spent nearly every day together even though they were in different Houses. Unfortunately, every moment he spent apart from her was spent with a group of soon-to-be Death Eaters. Their ideas permeated into Severus’s attitudes, because he was too deep into the hatred of his own Muggle father. He made a long string of wrong choices, and ultimately, Lily left him. His own choices did this, though. He recognised that and spent the rest of his life grieving the loss of her. After all, it was his master who killed her.”

Professor Sinistra motioned for Professor Snape’s wand. She placed it in his clasped hands, in burial formation.

“Holly and unicorn,” Professor Sinistra said, “but he’d never tell. As you have seen, he had it stained black.”

Professor Sinistra returned the letter and photograph of Lily Potter to the cloak pocket over Professor Snape’s heart, and touched his cheek.

“What lives we’ve had, Severus!” she said, and a beautiful spell began to encase him. It shimmered white-gold and arched over him like a glass-lidded coffin. Within the encasement, white lilies appeared all round his body on the catafalque, making it seem like he had taken rest in a field of flowers. Professor Sinistra held both of her hands palm-up and said a prayer in her mind that Astoria caught in the breeze. Then Professor Sinistra led Astoria out of the graveyard, and they admired the colours of blue beginning to dress the sky.

“I imagine some will come to see him, now that Harry Potter has indicated his heroism. Severus did not call for a service in his will, though I can’t help myself. I’ll do something small once people begin to gather,” Professor Sinistra said. “I don’t know what to do about his house. We left our houses to each other, you see. It will be more things for me to fail to clean up, probably.”

“WHAT A MESS! WHAT A MESS!”

Some happiness reached Professor Sinistra when her Doppelvanga flew back to her, using Snape’s voice and awkwardly tried to fit itself on her shoulders. Professor Grubbly-Plank was trying to get the enormous flock back in order.

“Figured that one was yours, Aurora! The other ones are still using their natural call!”

“Indeed he is,” Professor Sinistra said, stroking the blue feathers with her finger. “What a good job you did.”

“Good job you,” the bird said back.

The rest of the Doppelvangas continued their beautiful song, and like the faint sounds pouring down from the castle, it, too, held both death and life.


	31. Rowle Ridge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have bones to pick about Cursed Child's treatment of female characters (all characters, actually). I chose to bring our story to Rowle Ridge because I felt uncomfortable how this character was defined by her biological parents & how it's implied someone can be born evil.
> 
>  _"Theology being the work of males, Original Sin was traced to the female."_ \- Barbara Tuchman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 31 - "Cursum Perficio" by Enya and "Astronomer's Call" by Kate Bush ft. Kevin Doyle
> 
>  _Cursum perficio_ loosely means "my journey ends here," yet the affrettando halfway through the song indicates that things aren't ending just yet! "Astronomer's Call" is spoken word, but _my gosh_ , what an experience.
> 
> \---- ~ ----
> 
>  _"This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary  
>  The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.  
> The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God  
> Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility  
> Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place."_  
> \- "The Moon and the Yew Tree," S. Plath

Amidst the hymn of Doppelvangas, the events that had transpired continued to sink into Astoria’s bones like the morning chill. Now that Voldemort was dead, hopefully the gossips would realise that Astoria carried no child of his. The problem remained that she knew exactly where Rabastan had conceived the idea.

Tom Riddle and Bellatrix Lestrange had left a daughter in the possession of a Death Eater who was currently walking free. Astoria had seen this witch rescuing Rabastan Lestrange and in his memories before he perished. She had very long, dead blonde hair, and she moved like water. She did not hold a baby correctly in her arms.

“There is something loud in your mind,” Professor Sinistra said, turning her eyes from the clouds to Astoria.

“I am not sure you’re going to believe me when I tell you,” said Astoria.

“Well, tell me anyway. This is a day I’ll believe anything.”

Astoria couldn’t think of any nice way to put it and resolved to simply spit it out.

“Riddle really did have a child, a baby girl. He had her with Bellatrix Lestrange.”

Professor Sinistra’s look of peaceful, quiet grief changed to one of absolute displeasure and anger.

“Astoria, how could you make such a horrible joke at a time like this?”

“I’m not joking,” Astoria said defensively. “I learned this from Rabastan.”

Professor Sinistra was now completely beside herself, huffing and shifting her weight.

“You knew what sort of liar Rabastan was! That is exactly the sort of thing he would make up in one of his… one of his depraved fantasies!”

“I know Rabastan very well, Professor. Please understand. I combed the memory right from his head. There really _is_ a child. Her name is Delphini. She’s at a place called Rowle Ridge, on the coast. Euphemia Rowle was left in charge since the baby was kept secret from the Malfoys. I’m being serious. You asked me what was on my mind, so I told you.”

“Don’t you realise how fake that sounds, Astoria‽ Tom Riddle was a resurrected Horcrux user. Even I’m not entirely sure what that means, but it certainly doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that would allow viable reproduction!”

“I know it sounds mad! I know! I am relaying the information I got from Rabastan because it worries me! Euphemia Rowle is out there somewhere with a helpless baby!”

“This sounds like something someone just made up!”

“Professor, I _know_ it does!”

“Are you certain the child isn’t Bellatrix and Rodolphus’s?”

“Now, you know the answer to _that_ , Professor.”

“Euphemia and Rodolphus’s, then! Astoria, I just don’t see Tom Riddle making a baby!”

“I’m not asking you to _picture_ it, Professor.”

“Well, how could the Malfoys not know, then, if Bellatrix and Tom lived with them?”

“Big house? I don’t know! According to Rabastan, Bellatrix Transfigured herself to hide her baby bump. The girl’s birth was a secret. But she’s Bellatrix and Tom’s, Professor, and even if she wasn’t, _she exists_ , and she’s out there with a dangerous woman,” Astoria stressed.

“Would you share the memory you found in Rabastan with me, then? I — I understand your feeling, Astoria. I just need to see it to believe something so… so…”

“Comb the memory, then,” Astoria insisted.

Professor Sinistra looked as though she had drunk curdled milk when she left Astoria’s mind. That expression, at least, meant she believed her. They mulled it over without a single word for a while.

“Astoria.”

“Yes?”

“What do you want to do?” the professor asked gently.

Astoria thought first of her own blood curse, the sneaking plague on her family all caused by one Horcrux, and what might lurk within the poor child as well. She thought of Rhiannon Nicole Clarke, whose parents were downright evil. She thought of Flora and Hestia, who had not been given real childhoods. Astoria had taken her whole life for granted before this war. Even though they were not with her, she had both of her parents, and both of her parents happened to love her and treat her right. Rhiannon, Flora, and Hestia had not had that. And even though Draco was never mistreated, he was raised with such wretched ideology that it had ruined his life. If Astoria could go back in time and save Rhiannon from the sight of her father’s gun barrel, save the twins from gross manipulation, and save Draco from toxic racism, she would. Hell, if Astoria could undo the damage Professor Sinistra’s husband had endured from his father in childhood, she’d do that too, and probably save the whole flipping planet. But she could not go back in time. She could only go forward.

“I want to give that baby a fighting chance at a normal life,” Astoria said.

To her surprise, Professor Sinistra nodded and said, “I would like that as well.”

Astoria suddenly found herself overwhelmed with ideas on how to go about it.

“The Aurors that were on the run are back,” she said excitedly. “Many of them came here with the reinforcements!”

“God, no, don’t report it to the Aurors!” Professor Sinistra said, and Astoria detected the words “ _Are you out of your mind_?” nearly ready to leave the woman’s mouth again. Professor Sinistra settled from her shock, and said, “The very last thing we need is for the baby to be in Ministry custody. They will view her as a bad omen, a threat, or a prophecy. Or, worse, they may try to _study_ her since she was born of a Horcrux user. We must keep this as secret as the Lestranges did, Astoria, albeit for different reasons. Never trust the Ministry.”

Astoria understood that her Auror idea had been a poor one, but that left them with quite a problem, “Are you saying we are doing this _ourselves_?”

Professor Sinistra folded her hands and put the tips of her fingers to her lips, half-thinking, half-praying. Her eyes traced the damaged silhouette of the castle.

“No, not entirely alone,” she said. “I couldn’t trouble Glenda with this information after all she’s put up with from me. Luckily, though, the baby has living relatives. With a little clever convincing, it might be all we need. Now, _arresting_ Euphemia is another task entirely.”

Astoria’s eyes widened.

“Well, dear, we cannot hope to do this on three hours of sleep. From what I hear, the Hufflepuff basement and Slytherin dungeons are entirely intact. Go back to your dormitory and sleep, and I will see what is left of my tower and do the same. We will get the baby tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow?” Astoria questioned. “Won’t she have left the country by then?”

“Euphemia’s brother Thorfinn has been captured, and her lover Rodolphus has been killed. She will not flee without knowing their fates. Bear in mind, even though her faded Dark Mark indicates her master’s fall, she does not know of Bellatrix’s death. Would _you_ leave the country with Bellatrix Lestrange’s baby?”

“Er… no, that’s a death wish.”

“Exactly. If I know anything, it is that news does not reach Rowle Ridge very quickly. It is a most… wild place.”

“You know where it is? You know about the Rowles?” Astoria clambered, desperate for more information on the witch she had seen.

“I know that Euphemia was one of the many witches who wrote Rodolphus amorous letters after his arrest, fascinated with his looks and atrocities. She was the only one he ever responded to, as they both agreed upon their worship of Tom Riddle. Besides her relationship with Rodolphus, Euphemia is extremely private. She is said to spend much of her time in deep meditation, so she never impressed Riddle, who admired showy power. She thus hardly ranked above the Carrows. But had she not been belittled and placed on babysitting duty,” Professor Sinistra said, “we would still be fighting.”

~

For the first time, Astoria beheld the late Abraxas Malfoy’s muster of albino peafowl in person. There were several pied peafowl as well, who displayed a fanciful mixture of colour and white, and plenty of leucistic peafowl, who had white feathers with blue eyes. No matter their plumage, they were all beautiful birds, and Astoria admired the similarity of the pied peacocks’ eyespots to Professor Sinistra’s protective nazars. However, the peafowl were often in the way of the path and moved as slowly as a young couple walking hand-in-hand, unconcerned with who needed past them. In particular, since it was hatching season, the peahens and their peachicks left quite the trail of doo along the way, which Astoria and Professor Sinistra dodged. The Malfoys never would have left their walkway in this state under normal circumstances, but circumstances had not been normal for a long time.

Astoria dodged another peahen. Malfoy Manor was a dark, imposing place dotting the Wiltshire countryside, but beautiful in its own way. It was an authoritarian Elizabethan house, in contrast to Quennell Park’s dreamy French Baroque. It was no wonder why Grandfather Cygnus had been able to convince a tiny Draco that the house was haunted; although, in reality, it was Quennell Park that held more boundary disturbances between life and death.

A lot had happened in twelve hours as Wizarding society tried to put itself back together. Professor Snape had been buried in Hogsmeade with a view of the castle in accordance with his wishes, though Professor Sinistra had held a tribute for him first, which even Harry Potter attended. Professor McGonagall had been appointed Headmistress of Hogwarts, which was not going to close, but it had let out early. (As things usually went when Harry Potter was involved, final exams had been cancelled). The castle itself, though, remained open for students in need of housing. St Mungo’s Hospital and Illyius Orphanage had been flooded, and funerals were being announced left and right.

The Ministry was no longer run by Death Eaters, but it was still in shambles, and Professor Sinistra and Astoria were taking advantage of the disorganisation to do what needed done. After all, the professor warned, it would only be a matter of time before they would both be “called in” to the Ministry to testify about the Lestranges. Astoria used one of the tracking owls from the school to send out a letter to Flora and Hestia with the good news. She deliberately returned the Foe-Shard Hestia had lent her in the envelope and informed the twins that they would all be interviewed about Amycus and Alecto, whose corpses had confused the Hogwarts staff until Astoria had awakened from her nap and explained. The part Astoria left out in her letter to the twins was that the faculty’s confusion spanned well beyond finding the Carrows dead. Absolutely no one’s magic worked on the Carrows’ bodies to either move or inspect them until Professor McGonagall thought to use the pair’s own wands to transport them. Professor Sprout’s comment of “Right stubborn bastards” didn’t completely explain the phenomenon.

Kingsley Shacklebolt, who had battled Voldemort, was appointed the new Minister for Magic. He had, during a face-to-face conversation after the battle, informed both Lucius and Draco that they were on house arrest, and that the Ministry would be conducting investigations at Malfoy Manor by the end of the week. Lucius had been surprisingly cooperative, since he was trying to avoid another round of Azkaban time. Professor Sinistra was not above exploiting this, and neither was Astoria. The professor had plenty of great ideas for convincing Narcissa Malfoy to pick up her niece from Rowle Ridge. They were all better than Astoria’s preferred opening line: “Good evening, would you like to come help us prevent a Third Wizarding War?” Still, Astoria did not foresee Narcissa raising the child once they rescued her. Professor Sinistra claimed to have plans other than Illyius Orphanage. She had not yet shared them, however.

Astoria stayed behind a few steps. Once Professor Sinistra knocked on the door, it only took a few moments for Narcissa to answer it. The family was expecting the Ministry and wanted to appear like they were willing to help. When Narcissa beheld the figure of Professor Sinistra, though, she said, “Oh. It’s you.”

“Good evening, Mrs Malfoy. Have you finished your dinner? I do not want to intrude,” Professor Sinistra claimed.

“We — What do you want?” Narcissa said breathily.

“I won’t waste your time with formalities,” Professor Sinistra said. “Tell me what you know about Rowle Ridge, and why your sister spent time there.”

Narcissa looked genuinely confused. Lucius could be heard making interrogatory noises from within, to which Narcissa replied, “It’s Sinistra. No. No, it’s _Sinistra_. I’m going outside. No, stay inside, Lucius! No! _Accio feed_.”

After Narcissa’s many impatient waves, a sack of feed with dried fruit for the peafowl came into her hands at a very slow speed. She was not happy without her wand.

Narcissa did not invite Professor Sinistra into the house, and she totally ignored Astoria. She shut the door behind her and walked out to the gardens. Professor Sinistra and Astoria followed the hem of her dress as she spoke:-

“I know that Rowle Ridge is the home inherited by Euphemia Rowle, the eldest child of the late Mr and Mrs Karl Rowle. Thorfinn, her brother, resided there after Azkaban, as he had lost his own house. From what I understood, Rodolphus was intimately involved with Euphemia. He and Bellatrix would often visit her after their search missions.”

“Without Rabastan,” said the professor.

“Yes, without Rabastan,” said Narcissa, but seeing as Rabastan’s company could have not been wanted for any number of reasons, she wasn’t suspicious yet. However, once Professor Sinistra asked, “Would you say that they visited more often, say, after February,” Narcissa’s expression grew angry as she tossed the peachicks food.

“Legilimency doesn’t work on me, Sinistra. So how did you know about that?”

“I have information about Bellatrix from Rabastan,” the professor said.

Astoria disliked the tension and focused on watching the fluffy little peachicks peck at the ground.

“From Rabastan?” Narcissa whispered. “Surely he’s not coming back here, is he?”

“No, he is dead,” Professor Sinistra said.

“Good,” Narcissa responded instantly. “But my sister has died as well. I don’t understand what information you seek about her. If it’s Euphemia you are after, I would suggest you contact the Ministry rather than harass me. I know very little about her.”

Narcissa walked faster, and they ended up on the other side of the hedges, into the rest of the formal garden. (It was nice, but not as nice as Quennell Park’s).

“Mrs Malfoy, Rabastan has informed us that your sister had a baby,” Professor Sinistra introduced, “and that the child is being watched by Euphemia Rowle at the Ridge.”

Narcissa’s nails dug into the feed bag, and she turned her nose up. Her eyes were alight with fury, and the veins in her hands popped.

“What foolishness are you insinuating?” she hissed. “How could you come to me with this nonsense, after all my family has been through, and make mockery—”

Narcissa was so angry she could not produce the words. Astoria backed away, stumbling amongst the birds’ dining.

“You think — that since I have no wand — you think you can come here to _my_ home and—?”

“Mrs Malfoy,” Professor Sinistra interrupted, “If you cannot cast Legilimency, I will gladly extract the memory from myself, as there is a Pensieve in Hogwarts.”

“How dare — I can cast — with a _wand_ , I could cast — you _insolent_ …”

Astoria, though intimidated, felt she might make herself useful and intervene.

“Mrs Malfoy, please, look. Here, I have the main part of Rabastan’s wand. We defeated him, but prior to that, we obtained a memory. This is the memory we came to ask you about. Here, please, take one of my wands, and cast Legilimency, and you will see. Please.”

Mrs Malfoy’s breath skidded. Her eyes were very hard, and she kept swallowing her anger. But Astoria insisted, and held out both the silver lime and the cherry to her.

“Miss Greengrass, do you not realise that Rabastan was deranged, and that any memory in him is tainted by Azkaban’s effects and worse?” Narcissa tried to say calmly through her teeth. “My sister had no child. She and Rodolphus weren’t very…”

“It’s not what you think, Mrs Malfoy. Please,” Astoria begged.

Narcissa suddenly yanked the cherry out of Astoria’s hand and shoved the feed bag over to her. Professor Sinistra, meanwhile, had her arms crossed as Narcissa held the wand to her face.

“Oh, if it will make you take your leave sooner, Sinistra, I would do anything!” Narcissa said harshly. “ _Legilimens_!”

Then Narcissa’s mouth dropped open.

“No… there is no way. This is false…” Narcissa said, though it was real, very real, and it had happened in Malfoy Manor under everyone’s noses.

“Rabastan made this up. This is something he invented. He made vulgar comments all the time…” Narcissa continued desperately, but Rabastan’s transferred memory was not tainted with the signs of delusion or even False Memory Charms.

“No… oh, Bella, Bella,” Narcissa said, and she lifted the wand away to cover her face with both hands. “How awful. How dreadfully awful. I did not know.”

Professor Sinistra and Astoria were quiet whilst Narcissa tried to process it. The peacocks sounded like they were meowing in the enclosure behind the gardens, whilst the peahens cooed and stomped round for more food.

“I don’t understand,” Narcissa choked. “I just don’t understand it.”

“None of us do,” Professor Sinistra shrugged. “But Rowle is bound to try to create another Dark Lord out of the child.”

Narcissa was shaking her head.

“What’s to be done, though? Euphemia was given orders.”

“Those who ordered her are all dead,” Professor Sinistra said. “Mrs Malfoy, I am not asking you to take the child as your charge, but I implore you to get the baby away from Euphemia. You can do this with the pretence of being helpful, of sharing the news of the Dark Lord with her, and of taking the child off of her hands. After all, the baby is your niece, and Euphemia only took her with compensation.”

“You want _me_ to ask for the child?”

“Oh, do you think _I_ should do it?” Professor Sinistra mocked.

“No, no, you are right… She may simply give her to me. But Aurora, where do you intend to place the child? I cannot… We’re in no position to…”

“There is one other relative I have in mind,” Professor Sinistra said.

Narcissa welled with tears, and she turned away. Her smooth, piebald hair hid her face.

“Oh, but _she_ couldn’t possibly… not after what Bella did to her girl.”

“You hardly know Andromeda. Do not speak for her,” Professor Sinistra said.

Astoria had taken to feeding the peachicks, who bounced all over their mothers and siblings like big cotton balls. Would Andromeda Tonks be peachy with the child of Voldemort? What if they told her it was simply Bellatrix and Rodolphus’s? Would that work any better, though? As Narcissa had relayed, Bellatrix had been the killer of Nymphadora. This was a sticky situation. Astoria tried to think of any couple in her family who might want to take in a war orphan. Maybe Sylvester and Valera, or Erez and Hazel. They didn’t have to know it was Bellatrix’s. But what would she say? “ _Hi, it’s cousin Astoria_. _So… I’m alive and I found this baby_ …”

“We will meet you here at sunrise,” Professor Sinistra said definitively, as Narcissa still seemed to be waffling. Narcissa was the kind of person to pretend there wasn’t a problem in the hopes that it would go away. (That was exactly how Narcissa saw Astoria’s relationship with Draco). The situation with Delphini, though, wouldn’t allow that.

“Wait,” Narcissa said. “What do you mean ‘we’? She’s too young.”

Astoria looked at Narcissa uncomprehendingly, since she had somewhat forgotten her own age by this point.

“No Legilimens is young,” Professor Sinistra said. “Astoria is the one who combed the raw memory out.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean she needs to be involved! This is Euphemia Rowle!” Narcissa said. “And _you_ should know Astoria tested into her school year! She is only sixteen, Sinistra! All these conflicts… she’s not been of age!”

“Don’t you think I know my own charge’s age? Astoria is a more proficient witch than many.”

“Do you hear yourself?” Narcissa protested. “Besides, if I’m able to get the child since I’m Bella’s sister, then I would say _neither_ of you are necessary. Are you anticipating so much trouble that you would weaponise a teenager, Sinistra?”

“I don’t think you understand, Narcissa,” Professor Sinistra said. “Astoria and I are _your_ back-up, not the other way around. Not to mention, we’re your witnesses. If I am able to capture Euphemia, I will credit you and Lucius with providing me the information about Rowle Ridge. Wouldn’t that be a nice thing to tell the Ministry when they stop by later this week? My word may not mean much because of my husband, but this girl is a Greengrass.”

Narcissa could not have made it clearer how displeased she was, but she finally acknowledged her niece’s existence and agreed to the plan. They had been spotted through the windows by that point, though thankfully not overheard. Draco came out in fresh clothes and charmed bandages, and descended the back portico of the manor eagerly. Narcissa dropped Astoria’s wand over top of the feed bag she was still holding, clenched her fists, and stormed past Draco.

“She is not here for you, Draco,” Narcissa said coldly on her way back in the house. “She is here for more trouble.”

Draco shrugged her off and met Astoria with zeal. He wasn’t dressed for the cold spring night, and Astoria was surprised Narcissa didn’t insist on getting him a heavy coat and a kiss on each cheek.

“Here, you’re throwing the food all in one place,” Draco said with a smile. “That’s fine for the chicks, but the peacocks are going to fight if you keep doing that.”

He took the feed bag from her, and they set out a wider line of food. Professor Sinistra respected their privacy; she was hunched over the herb garden, seeing what was getting ready to flourish. Astoria discovered great joy in watching Draco Malfoy feed birds.

“We lost a few of the hens to Rabastan until Mother beat him up,” he said.

“Rabastan’s own wand killed him,” Astoria mentioned.

“That’s a fitting end. Oh, and I heard they found Rodolphus in more than one piece.”

“Professor Sinistra was ready for him to try to kill Neville Longbottom.”

“I see. Good riddance to them. They made my life miserable here. I can’t imagine what it was like for you, being captured…”

“It’s over.”

“Yes, it’s all over,” Draco said peacefully. “I’m hoping the Ministry takes some of their effects. If not, would you like to come over for a bonfire this summer?”

Astoria laughed, “Oh, Draco, your parents hate me.”

“They hate everyone,” Draco smiled. “You’re actually on the lighter end of the spectrum of hatred.”

“Wow, _that_ ’ _s_ a relief.”

“Oh, here, I wanted to give this back to you,” Draco said, and he pulled her Foe-Shard bracelet out of his pocket. “Thank you for letting me borrow it. It helped me not die.”

Astoria nodded and placed it back on her wrist.

“I wonder what would happen if you cast your Patronus over by the peacocks. It’d be funny if they got territorial and tried to fight it,” Draco suggested.

“Draco, I’m not going to tease the birds.”

“Aw, you’re right, I guess. They can get pretty mean with each other. Do you think your Patronus will attract the hens, though? That’d be even funnier.”

“Maybe we’ll try and see what happens some day. Not tonight. I’m all out of Patronuses.”

“I told my father about your Patronus when we saw you feed the birds from the window,” Draco said proudly.

“Hm! And what did he say?”

“He made one of his noises.”

“I see.”

“So,” Draco said, “what trouble are you here to cause? I happen to like it a little too much when you cause trouble.”

The cool weather did nothing to help Astoria’s hot face.

“Oh, well, it was mostly Ministry issues between Professor Sinistra and your mother,” she brushed off. “I wanted to come along to see you.”

There were pieces of truth in the lie. Astoria guessed that Narcissa was with Lucius, inventing a story that made more sense than the existence of Delphini that same moment.

Little did Draco know, Astoria was back at Malfoy Manor the following morning before dawn. She was wearing clothes she was not used to, hand-me-downs of duelling gear from Professor Sinistra. It had taken her two tries manually and three tries with her wand to get her boots laced the way they needed to be. Her pants and shirt were padded over spots especially vulnerable to blood-drawing curses. Both she and Professor Sinistra wore their hair in high buns, and Professor Sinistra looked like she was about to tame three dragons at once. Both were unimpressed when Narcissa came out in the latest style of the season. But as long as she played the part of the concerned aunt, it wouldn’t matter what any of them wore. Everything would go well.

Narcissa held out her graceful palm expectantly in Astoria’s face without so much as a “good morning.” Astoria hovered the cherry wand over the woman’s hand so that she would have to reach for it, and when she did, Astoria pulled it away quickly with a cheeky grin. Then she handed it over. Astoria was getting used to Narcissa’s glares; they were so overused that they wouldn’t have an effect on her forever.

Although Professor Sinistra knew the general location of Rowle Ridge, Narcissa was the only one capable of Apparating there, so they held her arms. They did not want to Apparate directly onto the property, though, since depending on what sort of magic detectors Euphemia kept, that would give away that there were three of them. After their stomach-churning travel, they landed on a huge terrain of brownish-grey rock. The smell of the salty, fishy sea was so heavy that it was on the palate. The waves crashed at a calm tempo, but this was no beach. Nautical morning twilight had arrived, and it would only be a short time before civil dawn broke and cast light upon the horizon’s black water.

“Oh, this is a broom’s ride from Azkaban,” Professor Sinistra said in surprise. “Still, it’d be easier to Apparate to Out Stack, and then go from there…”

Narcissa wasn’t very conversational about Azkaban. Unlike Professor Sinistra, she had never been twice-accustomed to actually camping out there.

“Ah, wasn’t it the Rowle family that created Azkaban?” Professor Sinistra continued.

“I believe it was,” Narcissa said quietly, as the wind tossed her dress and loose hair.

They walked along the craggy ground, covered in dew, until the dew changed to ocean spray. Pencil-thin streams of water ran beneath their feet in the veins of erosion. The end of the rocky island came into view, and Astoria scanned the whole panorama in search of a building. The waves beyond crested white from black. Somewhere behind Astoria was cold grassland and small farms, and even further south must have been the Shetlands. But there was nothing good ahead.

Astoria realised that she had known this place before, albeit from someone else’s memory. Farther north, many years ago, a pair of mages had thrown themselves into the sea after excommunication from Durmstrang. They had been rescued by the Rowles then, but Astoria could not tell whether their presence had become revenant, or if it was merely the poignancy of the memory. This place felt like the end of the Earth, as though any moment the wind would kick up and lift the witches off their feet, into the sea.

“Muggle-Repellent Charms,” Narcissa said.

“I feel them as well,” replied Professor Sinistra.

Astoria could not feel that magic. Instead, she swore she _could_ feel the spirits of the Carrows, though they were undifferentiated from the landscape. Perhaps the charms were all Narcissa felt, but Professor Sinistra had to sense the grave scrutiny under which they travelled. Astoria requested her ear for a whisper.

“Professor, they are here somewhere.”

“They cannot hurt us,” Professor Sinistra murmured calmly and squeezed Astoria’s hand. She cast Disillusionment Charms upon herself and Astoria before they got any closer to the water, and Astoria felt as cold as the gazing heralds.

“There it is,” Narcissa said, pointing at the silhouette towards the west. “I thought I had Apparated closer. She must have an Anti-Apparition spell in place.”

It was a large, A-frame home with weathered brown shingles, painted blue siding, and long skylights. The chimney stood well above the pyramid, like a false lighthouse. Astoria had sometimes daydreamt of having a house by a sea or lake all to herself, away from the rules and regulations at Quennell Park. There was a high wooden terrace on one side of the house, but it was empty of any outdoor furniture or decorations. Astoria doubted Euphemia was the type of person to set up a proper baby gate in front of the widely-spaced banisters if she kept Delphini to toddling age.

They watched Narcissa trek across the rocky surface toward the house. It felt strange to stand out there in the open, even if they were invisible, because Astoria didn’t feel invisible to everything. They were far back enough to feel separated from it all, but Astoria’s feelings stretched further and further across the cliff as the minutes passed. They saw Narcissa’s figure disappear round the edge of the house. Astoria noticed she kept holding her breath, and she ended up yawning to catch it.

“Delphini is the genitive case of the constellation Delphinus,” Professor Sinistra mentioned to break the silence, even though Astoria already knew the fact. “I wonder why she picked a genitive case for a name, and then pronounced it ‘del-fee-nee.’”

“Well, Delphinus doesn’t sound very feminine, even if Delphini doesn’t make sense,” Astoria said, though she spoke quietly because she knew the lemures were eavesdropping upon them. “Draco’s family tries to use names of stars or constellations.”

“The pronunciation is going to drive me mad,” Professor Sinistra said, but she sounded like she was smiling. “Perhaps we shall call her Delphi.”

“Baby Delphi,” Astoria tried out the word. “That’s rather cute, I think.”

“What was her middle name again? Oh, Megaera. That, at least, is the name of an asteroid. Bellatrix must have chosen the name in relation to the legendary Fury, though,” Professor Sinistra said. “After all…”

Astoria shivered against a breath of wind.

“Perhaps we could, er, get rid of the name, since there’s no birth certificate,” she whispered even softer, though she had no idea what their involvement with this baby would be after today.

“Well, no, I like the asteroid,” Professor Sinistra shrugged. “No one needs to know. It’s dreadfully unwise to disturb love magic.”

“Love magic?” Astoria questioned.

“Magic created of love,” Professor Sinistra stated the obvious. Astoria pursed her lips.

Narcissa was still not visible. If Euphemia wasn’t home at all, Narcissa would have been back already, so perhaps they were talking now. Astoria peeked at the Foe-Shard on her wrist, and there was nothing in it. That was good. The plan was to have Narcissa relay the information of Voldemort’s defeat and claim Delphini as her living relative. They would take the baby back to Professor Sinistra’s, which, although messy, would not be visited by the Ministry as soon as Malfoy Manor would. Then, once home, Narcissa would report Euphemia’s crimes and whereabouts to the Ministry and receive credit for being a rat. If something went wrong, well, they were ready.

Astoria felt silly standing there waiting, because it made her think all sorts of things about the baby she was about to see. (When she had seen Draco holding a baby in the enchanted mirror, she had first thought it was a cat). It went without saying that she hoped baby Delphi looked like her mother and not her father. She was two months old and hopefully well-nourished, but they were quite prepared to find the poor child in any state of neglect. Astoria’s mind wandered far from the immediate concerns during the wait, and she wondered what Bellatrix’s affinity to the dolphin constellation was. It seemed awfully benign for someone like her. However, Astoria, who was purer in heart than Bellatrix, tended to like monstrous constellations. At least Bellatrix hadn’t named the baby Serpens. Astoria put her hands in her pockets against the cold wind. The sun, now shining through the moving clouds, did nothing to help.

How had Bellatrix convinced Voldemort to have a baby? Maybe he planned to turn her into another Horcrux or something. What a great dad.

“We never wanted a child ourselves,” Professor Sinistra chatted. “I certainly don’t mind watching her, though I’m not fit to _raise_ her.”

“You did a fine job with me, Professor,” Astoria joked.

“Oh my! I found you once you were already past your annoying years,” Professor Sinistra chuckled. “And you love all the same things I do. Teens never like the things their parents do.”

“I hope she doesn’t have a single thing in common with those two.”

“Nurture comes after nature,” Professor Sinistra avowed. “That’s the final say. I’ll do my very best to convince Andromeda. Of course, she already has a baby in her care. Did you hear? Nymphadora had a son last month.”

Astoria’s heart both swelled and shattered. She had had no idea Nymphadora Tonks was pregnant. How tragic. The couple’s baby was already an orphan. She dug her hands even deeper in her invisible pockets and bit her lip. It was pushing it to ask Andromeda anyway, since Delphi’s mother had killed Nymphadora. But how would she accept a _second_ orphaned child when she was a new widow? This was asking a lot of one woman who had no family left.

 _Well_ , _we have to actually_ get _the baby first_ , Astoria thought, as it had been taking a little too long.

There were many noises. The seabirds, the crashing waves, the wind against the cliffs, the memory of the drowning siblings Astoria could not shake. But it felt so silent. Astoria temporarily made herself visible and checked her Foe-Shard again. There was an outline of a single person, with very long hair.

“Professor, Euphemia’s in the glass.”

“Ah, yes. I never took Euphemia as the type to invite people in for tea,” Professor Sinistra said. “We ought to move closer, and see what’s happening. Stay close to me.”

The cliff was not easy to traverse, and the closer they drew to the house, the closer they drew to the edge. Astoria did not regularly suffer from vertigo, but she couldn’t look over the ledge lest she feel like she was dropping. They were much higher than they had first felt when they Apparated here. Astoria and the professor crept alongside the house, at a far enough distance to not be detected, but close enough to see. To their displeasure, Narcissa was standing on the front stoop. Euphemia was in the door frame with her hands folded in front of her. Neither of them had the baby. Narcissa was considerably more animated than Euphemia, as though she had been aggravated. Euphemia simply stood there.

This was the closest Astoria had seen Euphemia. Her most prominent feature, of course, was that calf-length blonde hair. It had reached its terminal length but was not cared for, and it looked like a dish brush. She had it parted in the middle, which emphasised the squareness of her jaw. Her eyebrows were so light it looked like they weren’t there at all, but she didn’t need them to show how cruel her expression was. Euphemia wore a plain grey dress with large, symmetrical pockets on her hips and buttons down the entire length of the front. It stopped exactly above the arch of her feet, which were bare. Astoria concentrated closely on the conversation as it reached them from their hiding place.

“You want more gold, Euphemia? Is that what you are trying to tell me? My husband is on the brink of an Azkaban sentence, and you want more gold?”

“Your husband lives. Yet the wizard who meant most to me has died. A hero’s death, but still a death. You have cheapened my feelings down to mere greed. I am not greedy, Narcissa, I am jealous. You, who already had everything in life, also had a chance to be the Dark Lord’s most prized servants, and you all have squandered it. Now you demand His child. I cannot allow it, lest she end up spoiled and weak like your son.”

Euphemia had an eerily gentle voice, low and cool, like she was not used to using it. Her gaze was always above Narcissa’s head. At first, Astoria thought she might be blind, but it was not so. She was trancelike.

“You said yourself you don’t even want her child,” Narcissa said, a distant hint of familial faithfulness in her tone.

“I don’t, but I made a promise, and I received access to the Lestrange vault. It will keep me to old age. I am the last in Britain to lay claim to the Lestrange name. Unlike you, I am not a witch who rescinds my word and my loyalty at each changing tide.”

“You dare…”

“My remarks are true, not daring. There can be no ‘dare’ when I am more powerful than you. Leave here,” said Euphemia unnervingly. “Do not show your face to me again, and we will hold our peace.”

Narcissa was aghast.

“I am the child’s living relative. I housed Bellatrix. I housed her all throughout her pregnancy! I am Bellatrix’s own sister!”

“No, I will say it one last time. Your blood means nothing. After all, _Andromeda Tonks_ is also her sister,” Euphemia said. “Madam Deputy Lestrange left the child with me, not her own sister. I am merely a subordinate, so what is the greater meaning for you? Could it be that she disowned you as she disowned Andromeda? Lucius was stripped of rank long ago.”

Narcissa’s hands clenched Astoria’s wand in her pocket. Euphemia seemed to sense this, but she did not draw her own wand. Instead, she stepped out from the threshold and shut the door. She slinked up to Narcissa, so closely that their feet and chests touched. It was a move one might see from a childhood bully, but it was extremely frightening, as Euphemia did not even look Narcissa in the face as she did this. Her gaze was _always_ up, _too far_ up, and when she shoved Narcissa towards Astoria’s spot, Astoria saw exactly how much white Euphemia’s eyes showed.

“This is bad,” said Professor Sinistra, and the moment Astoria heard Professor Sinistra’s feet against the rock, Narcissa cast a Gouging Spell upon Euphemia’s right hand before she could reach for her wand. The problem was that it led Euphemia to change her mind about using her wand entirely.

“A grimoire!” Astoria screamed in terror, for she knew it was a fully-fledged one, well beyond the stages of note-taking and energy collection. Euphemia was going to use the book to assist her magic. As Euphemia ran side to side, always just missing their triad of curses, she held the book to her side and let the rising wind turn its pages. With the blood drawn from Narcissa’s curse upon her hand, Euphemia used her fingers as a painter’s brush upon a palette. Astoria began to aim at the grimoire more than Euphemia, but none of her spells landed, no matter what… Astoria could not believe this. Euphemia was invincible without even doing anything! Her figure etched against the edge of the cliff was something to be envied indeed.

Astoria continued to cast, but she realised something was wrong once those curses began to land. Her allies beside her meant business, and so did she. Why was Euphemia able to withstand — no, _absorb_ — these curses? Euphemia looked over her shoulder, and Astoria had not been so afraid since Rabastan had trapped her in dimensional magic, the smell of Amortentia against his sweat. Euphemia’s eyes were glowing green-yellow.

“ _Avada Kedavra_!” Professor Sinistra shouted, but Euphemia jumped over the edge of the cliff, almost one-thousand feet down into rocks…

Narcissa halted, as they, too, had come close to the edge, but Professor Sinistra could be heard running forward, saying, “No, no. No, no.”

Astoria followed Professor Sinistra’s voice to join her side, and she fought the dizziness to look down from the ridge. There was nothing there, only the sea, and the loud waves hitting the rock of the island.

“She’s… where did she go?” Astoria panted. “Did she remove the Anti-Apparition spell? Did she Disapparate?”

Professor Sinistra drew a breath of the salty air.

“No.”

Something was amiss. Astoria never had uncovered exactly _how_ the Rowles had saved the Carrows from sinking in these waters. But the Carrows had been further out at sea, and they had only jumped from a boat. Euphemia had dropped hundreds of feet towards sharp rocks.

“Professor, if she didn’t Disapparate… she’d be… The drop alone would kill her, but the _rocks_ …”

“No,” Professor Sinistra said, and her voice trembled. “She is getting ready.”


	32. The Sea Witch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"The fish said to Jonah, 'Dost thou not know that my day has arrived to be devoured in the midst of Leviathan's mouth?'"_  
>  \- The Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer  
> 
> 
> _"sing ! O leviathan ! sing  
>  lift Your voice and  
> bellow to us  
> of Your lost pods  
> Your wonderful oceans  
> Your salty maternity"_  
> -["leviathan" by C. Jarvis](https://hellopoetry.com/poem/925134/leviathan-inspired-by-pablo-neruda/)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 32 - "Pax Deorum" by Enya (best with headphones)

The great skuas stopped calling, and their brown shapes soared back over the land, away from the water that had given them breakfast. The wind, which had already been a sweeping force that morning, picked up to so great a speed that Astoria feared loss of balance. The professor made them both visible once again, so that they would not lose each other in the sudden windstorm. It howled against the edifice of the rock with more tenor and voice than any ordinary wind.

Narcissa ran back to the house and tried to Blast down the door, not for shelter, but to get the child and Disapparate. Astoria and the professor ran after her, but there was no spell that would get them in the house. Everything they cast reverberated against a hitherto unseen membranous shield. The spell was invincible, and the shield made the sound of timpani when it was hit. There was no thunder, only the drums of their spells and the wailing wind. There was no rain, only the spray of saltwater as the waves crashed much higher than they had before.

It was Narcissa’s idea to leave empty-handed, and Astoria was glad Narcissa was the one who said it, because she felt it, too. For as windy as it was, the air hung too heavy, leaving the humidity of unfathomably Dark magic upon them. Euphemia Rowle would not kill the child, but she would kill them. Fearing she would be swept into the maddened sea, Astoria reluctantly resolved to turn tail and figure out another plan later. The normal, breezy morning had devolved into a living nightmare. There were voices in the wind, and it was no language of Earth. As they ran past the house, desperately trying to get inland, Astoria could see the cold waters of the North Sea rising.

 _What spell could possibly_ …?

“SINISTRA!” Narcissa screamed when she realised the professor was not pursuing them in their flight.

Astoria spun round. Professor Sinistra had not followed them beyond the house. Narcissa’s hand clenched Astoria’s and tugged her along. All Narcissa would do was call for the professor, not actually go back to get her. Astoria screamed as she was led away… to safety, yes, but away from her beloved mentor.

“ _PROFESSOR SINISTRA_!”

Professor Sinistra stood with her long wand straight up. She was unafraid of the rising water, and Astoria realised why. It would not reach the house the baby was in. It was not progressively rising. It was swelling and receding. It was… breathing.

“MRS MALFOY, WE CAN’T LEAVE HER!”

“IF SHE EVER HAD HER MIND, SHE’S LOST IT!”

“MRS MALFOY, LET GO OF ME!”

Narcissa wouldn’t. She intended to Disapparate with Astoria by force. Astoria hated to do this, but she raised her wand at Narcissa’s unbreakable hold on her hand…

And then they both collided with something and fell to the ground. Narcissa stood up first, pounding her fists on another invisible shield, and it resounded exactly like the house, a poorly-played timpani. Astoria rolled to her knees and hoisted herself back up.

“ _Specialis Revelio_ ,” she cast, and they both beheld that they were trapped.

The shield was insurmountably tall, up in the clouds, and the only way round it was an eight-hundred foot drop into the angry sea. They were still within the confines of the Anti-Apparition charm, and since there was no way to break into the house and locate a broom, they tried every shield-buster they knew. Nothing worked. Narcissa was content with staying near the edge of the trap, but Astoria wasn’t. They couldn’t win by hanging back and letting Professor Sinistra do all the work. It was hard to run against the force of the wind, but Astoria put flexible Sticking Charms on her feet and made her way back to Professor Sinistra. They didn’t have time to greet each other. The professor was trying to twist the rushing clouds. She did not want a clear sky. Astoria studied the clouds quickly. They were too heavy for a light Atmospheric Charm, but not quite ready to rain. Astoria went the intermediate route. She stretched her arm up as far as she could and said, “ _Nimbus momentum_!”

“Thank you! I’m trying to make a storm!” Professor Sinistra explained.

“Right!” said Astoria, but she didn’t really understand the plan.

“Keep the clouds on the water! I want them to join together into one system!”

“All right!”

It was very hard to move an entire trail of clouds, but Astoria’s ability had come a long way since working in teams to move one cloud at a time. She had helped control a storm yesterday in the battle. Hopefully, she would be able to manage one today with sore arms. Yet Astoria wondered what good a storm would do in these conditions.

“Where _is_ she‽” Astoria asked.

“In the water!”

“How do you know?”

“Well, that’s where she went, isn’t it‽ Look at the waves! We need a storm!”

With the unsettling rise and fall of the sea level, the waves had all become disturbed. They were buckling up, merging with each other, and breaking at unfathomable heights. Each one seemed taller than the last, creating even deeper dips below the sea surface. Each crash echoed with more preternatural sound, like wooden ships cracking, people screaming… But there was no one living out at sea except Euphemia…

“Professor — forgive me — won’t a storm make this _worse_ ‽ It’s not even raining, and the water’s already doing this, so…”

“Whatever she’s doing down there, she can’t control the effects of a storm at the same time! It’d be nice to have Narcissa’s help, but that’s a lost cause!”

Professor Sinistra had no thunderstorm yet, but the sound soon became one. Astoria lassoed the wind-swept clouds as best she could, but her attention could not remain undivided. The waves began to swirl, and whilst they still crashed at terrible heights above the changing water levels, their spill went deeper still. _Steam_ , not spray, began to exude from the surface of the water, and though it was previously ice cold, it had been brought to an unmistakable boil, where piles of white bubbles appeared over the froth and sizzled into the cool wind.

In the midpoint between where they stood and the horizon, a deep hole opened in the rolling, breathing boil of the water. It was nowhere near where Euphemia had fallen, but it was still too close for comfort. The wind had taken a fetid smell quite suddenly, but Astoria was already holding her breath from fear of the rushing sinkhole opening in the sea. Was Euphemia even _alive_ anymore?

Astoria lay her eyes upon the remains of scores — no, hundreds — of wrecked Muggle ships, dating from all parts of history, decaying green upon the grimy ocean floor. The seafloor lit up bright with magic, or could that be called magic? No…

Suddenly, the ocean spilled back into the vast pit that had parted open. A guttural, infernal roar came from below. The smell became still more sulphuric, and Astoria gasped it in uncontrollably. An enormous, iridescent, scaled body crested the distressed waves in an arch. The snake was a thousand times the size of the serpent Euphemia had used to rescue Rabastan from the exploding funeral parlour. Another arch of the back emerged from the waves. The monster was tangled like necklaces just below the surface. It was not truly a snake, for in its writhing, a spiny, house-sized fin broke through the hot foam. The fin’s sickly grey-blue membrane pulsed with a collection of angry red veins that made it clear this was no fish, either.

“Er… I understand you and Narcissa can’t get out‽” Professor Sinistra shouted.

“Nothing worked!” Astoria reported.

Professor Sinistra laughed through her nose. It was not a good laugh; it was a claim laid to the quirk of fate. She continued her fight to master the sky the way Euphemia mastered the sea, but admitted:-

“It seems we’re way over our heads!”

The guttural roar sounded again, creating more ripples in the turbulent ocean, and the head of the monster erupted from the water. It looked like a rejected prototype of a dragon, far more prehistoric. It had high slits for a nose on its black-green face. On its crown, it had exposed bone, which tapered like sandstone and darkened like coal into horns that hung behind the head. Its eyes were round and flaming yellow, with vertical, beaded pupils spanning the length of them. The pupils were the only break in the light cast from the eyes, which were false lighthouse lamps, traps for all sea-farers. The fork-tongued mouth of the beast was worse than the mouth of a dementor, not necessarily in appearance, but in the sound and the smell. The more noise it made, the more Astoria realised that its roar was made not of one diaphragmatic breath, but thousands of coarse screams.

“Oh, _here_ ,” came the voice of Narcissa Malfoy, and whilst Astoria and Professor Sinistra worked the sky, she cast Bubble-Head Charms so that they would not suffocate from the stench.

“Welcome back to the party, Narcissa!” Professor Sinistra called sardonically. “It seems Euphemia has a demon, or, I should say, it has her!”

“Yes, yes, I realise that, thank you!” snapped Narcissa, and she anchored all their feet more firmly to the ground just in time for the creature to suck in the wind.

Narcissa erected a thick Shield around them, only leaving space at the top for Astoria and Professor Sinistra to keep manipulating the clouds.

“What do you think _that_ is going to do‽” Narcissa criticised.

“Disorient her at the very least! But do you see that little dot between the eyes? That’s Euphemia! It’ll knock her off!”

Narcissa and Astoria squinted and searched until they saw her. A flash of light had been what caught Astoria. It had come from Euphemia’s still-glowing eyes, which matched the demon’s. Astoria soon made out the image of Euphemia’s hair being tossed into a wild nest by the wind. A powerful feeling of inefficacy grabbed her as she feasted her eyes upon Euphemia and the demon. With an entire childhood and much of an adolescence spent hearing what it meant to be a witch, Astoria wanted Euphemia’s power. The longer Astoria fought the clouds, the more sweat that broke, and the more aches that settled in, the deeper she envied Euphemia’s manipulation of a beast that could devour the wind and sea. And the more she grew embittered with this feeling, the less control she had over the magic she badly needed to maintain.

 _What would I do with that thing anyway_? Astoria thought, trying to bring herself out of the hypnosis of the fiend’s enthralling form. _Pet it_?

A closer look at the pair in the sea revealed that Euphemia was a borrower of power rather than a powerful witch on her own. She was attached to the demon umbilically, with a nasty twine coiling down from beneath her dress, which connected not to the monster’s own abdomen but to the inside of the hellmouth. Her hair tossed all over her trancelike face, and she moved her outstretched arms in a twisting dance. She had used these moves on the black snake in the Muggle building, except it had been she who was in control. Here, she was nothing more than a shipwrecker from a shipwrecking family, all under the influence of a sea serpent marked by want.

> **_Depiction of Leviathan from the Middle Ages found in grimoires_ **

“ _Cumulonimbus momentum_ ,” Astoria re-cast as the clouds became too heavy for her original spell.

“Great catch of the clouds!” Professor Sinistra said. “I felt I was doing something right, but this environment is not what I’m used to!”

The clouds continued to distort from the demon’s steam in the ocean water. For as turbulent as Euphemia desired to make the sea, she neglected to consider that the sea and sky were married entities.

“Do you mean to strike lightning against Euphemia, then?” Narcissa questioned as she struggled to maintain the shield in the sucking wind.

“Oh, that is one of my ideas! I’d like something more, though! You know, since this _is_ a demon we’re against!”

“But Sinistra, that would require…!” Narcissa said unsurely, almost nervously. “Can you still…?”

“I make storms all the time!” Professor Sinistra responded. “I just have to — er, forgive me, _test the waters_. It seems the boiling of the sea will work in our favour!”

Astoria’s entire back hurt from all the magic wrestling she was doing against clouds so far offshore. Though she agreed with Narcissa that Professor Sinistra’s plan was not fool-proof, and maybe not so sensible, the plan to conjure rain would have to be put into action at all costs. The demon began to spit fire hotter than any dragon known to man. It reached all the way from the sea to the edge of the cliff, where it crashed upon the rock much like the huge waves round the monster’s body. The demon dipped back under the water, and re-emerged much closer. Euphemia lifted both of her palms like a haphazard maestro conducting an orchestra to become louder. The demon opened its maw again, and the spit came right towards them, engulfing their shield in a blast of white-hot fire. The small opening at the top allowed heat and flaming cinders inside, and Narcissa was about to close it as one got on her dress.

“ _DON’T_!” Professor Sinistra shouted. “Put up with it! We need to get it to storm! We need this opening in order to cast!”

“It’s a hundred degrees in here!” Narcissa screamed back.

“It’s a thousand out there, Malfoy, so shut it!” Professor Sinistra said. “She’s not going to let us go alive, don’t you understand? Astoria, keep piling clouds! Try to get them as tall as you can! Make an even better anvil of the clouds!”

“I’m trying, Professor! I can’t see, and I don’t have a pressure altimeter!”

“Try harder! Just guess!”

 _What ever happened to_ ‘ _very good_?’

It had been easy to get a small cloud to burst by accident on the Hogwarts grounds, but to conjure a storm from scratch was a greater workout than running the length of Quennell Park thrice. Astoria wanted to tear off her shirt it was so hot, but Heaven forbid Narcissa see the blood magic on her arm again. What a scandal that had been. Astoria didn’t have the free hands to undress herself anyway. Both were clasped on her wand. As far as the wand itself, she liked its lassoing ability much better for atmospheric magic, but she hated to see the cherry relegated to Shield-casting, since it held great power, too.

The fire dissipated for a moment as the monster drew its breath to pull them, and Astoria double-checked that the thing they were fighting for was still there. Thankfully, the house behind them was unscathed. Astoria doubted she could keep this up if anything were to happen to the baby. Euphemia continued to dance upon the head of the creature, and its searchlight eyes fixed upon them, nearly blinding them.

“ _Colovaria_!” said Narcissa, and her Shield turned a deep indigo to stifle the light.

The blackness of the Nidhogg Shield would have also done the trick, but there was no way to leave an opening at the top in that spell. This opening, though, remained a point of weakness. The fires of the demon collided with them again, and then swept back once more as the wind pulled them. The proximity of the monster was becoming a terrible threat, and Narcissa’s Shield slid slowly but surely across the rock, towards the ledge… The trio’s feet released from the Sticking Charms as they slid due to the magical, cursed heat on the rock beneath them.

“Professor, the Nidhogg Shield may hold us!” Astoria offered, trying to get her to come up with another plan. Still, who was she to criticise the plan when she herself had no clue what to do? Fairness didn’t really matter, though, when everyone’s feet were burning and sliding toward certain death. Each time the fire let out, the house was further away, and the ocean was closer…

“Oh, this will be _perfect_!” Professor Sinistra yelped as her wand twisted over her head.

“FORGET PERFECT — IT JUST HAS TO WORK!” Narcissa screamed as the Shield began to crack from the blasts of hellfire near the weak spot above them.

Then, in spite of all the other sound, Astoria heard a strange noise from behind her. It was the call of a bird she had never heard before, a ghost’s moan set to idiophonic music. There was no bird in sight, for all creatures had fled. Astoria looked up, and she was met with something on her face — rain.


	33. Innocence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Draw a monster. Why is it a monster?"_  
>  \- "Daughter," J. Lee  
>   
>  _"The grief knocks me over,  
>  Like mid-day waves against the rocks,  
> And now I am a hollow body of devotion,  
> I tend to my grief like a garden  
> On my hands and knees,  
> and watch it  
> Grow into weeds.  
> At least there is life here somewhere."_  
> \- [scully](https://hellopoetry.com/poem/3815831/another-poem-about-grief/)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 33 - "The Big Sky (Meteorological Mix)" by Kate Bush

> “A hell-mouth with a devil tormenting souls,” _Apocalypse_

Though the thunder was quieter than the howls of the monster, it made its presence known. The storm broke fresh upon them in a beautiful downpour, and the next blast of the demon’s fire fizzled out to splotches of bloody ash against their Shield.

“Aha! Didn’t think of this, did you, Euphemia?” Professor Sinistra said, all for her morale, since there was no way Euphemia would hear them.

But the wind still pulled them toward the drop-off. Without the threat of instant incineration if she were to make the slightest mistake, Narcissa was able to spare a second to reinforce the Shield.

“Astoria, let the clouds go so you can help her!” Professor Sinistra instructed.

Astoria cast Freezing Charms upon the heated rock beneath them. Even though the ice melted instantly, their feet stopped burning. She set a second round of Sticking Charms upon them all, hoping they wouldn’t be swept again. There was a thin line between being held securely and not being able to walk again, but she managed to figure it out. Anything helped, she thought. Anything helped when your opponent had foregone the manners of duelling and went straight to summoning sea-demons. Once they had their bearing on the cliff again, Astoria cast her Atmospheric Charm out to the panicked ocean, and seized the cloud she and Professor Sinistra had manipulated.

“Do you have it?” Professor Sinistra asked.

“It’s difficult at this distance, Professor. I don’t have it well!”

“You don’t need to hold it so still anymore! I want you to let it rotate now! In fact, help it rotate!”

“Rotate it?” Astoria asked.

“Rotate it?” Narcissa echoed.

“ _Did I stutter_ ‽” Professor Sinistra exclaimed.

Astoria missed the soft, muddy ground of the Hogwarts battlefield, since there was no way to dig her feet deeper into this rock. No Sticking Charm could make her feel braced enough to perform the colossal task of wrenching the raining cloud in a circular fashion, especially as it got heavier by the second. The demon continued to send fire from its cavernous mouth, and even though the flames no longer reached them, the heat and the smell did. The flame met the rain, making echoing hisses across the seascape as it turned into more steam. Narcissa’s Shield was spotted with bloody ash, one of the many problems that obscured Astoria’s vision from the very thing at which she was supposed to aim.

“Professor… I’m sorry, but I think I’m messing something up!” Astoria exclaimed as she felt the cloud begin to get away from her magic.

“You are! You are! Good job! Keep doing that!” Professor Sinistra shouted back confusingly.

“Professor, _what_ ‽ _I’m messing up the spell_!”

“Yes, exactly, I need you to!” Professor Sinistra said as another round of boiling steam collided with the Shield. “That’s why I gave you such a big job! There’s no way it will work from here! With some agitation…”

Astoria suddenly felt a horrible snap of her magic breaking, and Narcissa gasped. The demon in the sea had rolled its head back towards the sky, and its fiery eyes no longer reached them but watched the clouds. Narcissa made her Shield transparent again, and through the dark droplets, Astoria peered out to the storm. A dark discolouration formed in the boiling water near the creature, and in the clouds above, a needle-point cloud dipped down.

“A fucking tornado‽” Astoria screamed.

“A fucking waterspout!” beamed the professor.

With as lissom a body as the demon, the waterspout danced into a dark grey vein, and kicked up high, white spray from the water. With such immense power, the monster was indifferent to the phenomenon, but Euphemia was not. Her own glowing eyes met the form of the dangerously close spout, and she began rolling her arms to encourage the monster away.

But with an incredible howl, the demon arched its long back and raised its ugly fins out of the water. It was too large to traverse the maze of rocks near the cliff without cutting its own gut and dissented with Euphemia’s instruction. However, it still dove with her back into the water and emerged the closest to them it had been yet. Astoria could see the ridges within its scales and the green sea flora tangled in Euphemia’s hair. Then she was blinded: the monster had a second pair of sun-bright eyes opening up in slits below the jaw. These eyes were more sinister. There was something about them that made one look deeper… a hypnotic effect that showed the heart’s worst desires, more violating than that old, enchanted mirror…

“Don’t look at it, Malfoy!” Professor Sinistra screamed, apparently having more faith in Astoria’s willpower.

Scrunching her eyelids shut against the four blinding searchlights, Professor Sinistra pointed her wand at her own face, and then drew it upward to the opening in the Shield, at the sky once more.

“ _Orgone adiuramentum_!” she said, and the monster’s frying lights shot sideways out of view.

With the unpredicted ascendancy of the professor’s spell, the waterspout expanded and, by the sound of the wind, reached speeds no normal waterspout would. Professor Sinistra had gained total control of the thing, which was a testament to her power, since Astoria had lost her hold on atmospheric magic the moment the funnel had formed.

The rain now came in torrents, not only from the cumulonimbus they had created, but from every cloud as far as the eye could see. Narcissa was forced to raise the bottom of the Shield, so that the rainwater entering their dome could run back out. The thousand voices from the creature screamed again from the frustration of a storm it had not caused, and Professor Sinistra danced the waterspout directly into its mouth, ravaging its forked tongue and the cord that held Euphemia. The demon careened, trying to swim away from the weather, and the whole sky looked like it was flashing as its bright eyes went everywhere.

“GRAB THAT CLOUD AGAIN!” Professor Sinistra shouted as the demon tried to swim away.

“ _CUMULONIMBUS MOMENTUM_!” Astoria cast, and she instantly felt like she was doing one-armed push-ups. It was a tightrope walk between letting it rotate and letting it get away.

“KEEP IT OVER THE DEMON!” Professor Sinistra instructed, but she really didn’t have to. Astoria had figured that much out.

It was no longer fire, steam, or blinding eyes that obscured her view, but the rain. Astoria had seen some bad storms over the years, but she had never seen the sky sob like this. The ocean had no discernible horizon or sea level anymore, as it was all splattering grey-blue paint. Then, without warning, Narcissa’s Bubble-Head Charms broke, and the cold rain hit Astoria’s eyes, weighing down her lashes, and it looked like _they_ had been the ones underwater, not Euphemia. There was no longer any flame at all coming from the demon’s suffering mouth. Euphemia was still holding on, but she was hunkered down between the bony horns, and the rain was running rivers down the creature’s face. Astoria had a strange feeling, and the closest she could compare it to would be the sensation of being next to a Patronus. Was it the professor’s magic?

“REMOVE THE SHIELD!” Professor Sinistra commanded to a very reluctant Narcissa, and to get any cooperation, she had to add the explanation, “I NEED FULL RANGE!”

Narcissa’s Shield dissolved, and they felt the rush of wind. Professor Sinistra’s arms crossed over and under one another repeatedly as she used both her hand and wand to manipulate the sky. Meanwhile, Astoria held the cloud over the demon and its summoner so that their assault could continue. Professor Sinistra twisted the waterspout onto the head of the monster, and each time, it dove under the water to rise again at a different spot, Euphemia flailing all over the place.

“It’s missing Euphemia!” Narcissa exclaimed as the waterspout hit the creature’s neck.

“ _I am trying my best_!” Professor Sinistra retorted.

Her braided bun was coming undone in the wind and rain, and everyone’s clothes were sodden and cold. Yet Astoria still lassoed the cloud, and the professor still wrenched the sky down upon the demon.

“ _Cumulonimbus momentum_!” Narcissa cast at the same cloud to help Astoria as the monster panicked and moved all over the waves, making it hard to follow.

The waterspout swelled and roared, and Professor Sinistra’s arm trembled. She dragged the spout to the ugly, tooth-bared face, and the force of the storm finally hit Euphemia’s body. The impact of nature upon her was amazing. Euphemia’s falling form was like a flag torn from a ship, and she hit the water with a tiny splash.

The demon’s immeasurably long body, though, rose above the water and splashed down headfirst into the ocean, and the impact separated the sea again. It produced a wave bigger than any wave the tides would make of their own accord. Narcissa grabbed Astoria, and Astoria grabbed Professor Sinistra, and they tried to Apparate again out of desperation, but it would not work. Narcissa undid the Sticking Charms, and they all tried to run before the ocean would splash hot over Rowle Ridge.

The wave broke loudly against the face of the cliff, and the burning water came up to Astoria’s ankles for a moment, smelling awful, but there was no flood. It receded and was gone. They all paused and breathed for one minute, standing in the rain. The waterspout died, having been broken up by the sea’s final parting. The ocean stopped bubbling and sizzling, though it remained confused and unnatural. There was no sign of the creature. Professor Sinistra looked at the sky, and Narcissa looked at the sea, leaving Astoria the only one of them staring at the edge of the salt-tortured cliff. A bad taste salted her mouth.

As she had suspected from the beginning, they still had unwanted company other than the demon and its pet Euphemia. Astoria was met with no haunted sound, no dread sight, no chill of the spine, but she could not remove her attention from the spot. She lamented that she was sensitive to such things, and she deeply resented the Carrows’ desire to harass her even after death. Her eyes would not listen to her will any longer, and she remained fixated on the line dividing the rock’s edge from the span of water. She was unable to break free. True to what Rabastan had accused, Astoria started making excuses for herself, except this time, the excuses were correct.

 _I tried to help you both_. _You didn’t want help_. _You wanted someone to take it out on_.

A cold sweat descended upon Astoria’s already-dysregulated body.

 _I wouldn’t have killed you if you weren’t going to kill your own family_. _You were wrong_. _I have nothing for you_. _Let me go_. _Let me go_.

Her request, as expected, went ignored, and her eyes still would not move. She wanted to disconnect from this memory. She wanted to close this chapter of her life. Never again did she want to smell Alecto’s oxtail soup or see the veins in Amycus’s violent hands. She wanted to celebrate Euphemia’s fall and admire the sky with Professor Sinistra.

“Astoria?” Professor Sinistra uttered, touching her shoulder. It was no use. Astoria was held captive yet again, no longer in a hotel or office, but in the fabric between worlds. The spirits smothered her in glue, because their family tree was riddled with toxic resin, and she had been the only one who tried to salvage amber.

 _What the hell do you want from me_? she demanded.

A pang. She realised that was not the right question.

 _Why are you trying to warn me…_?

Streams of water continued to glisten along the rock by the drop-off. Then something smacked upon it from below. Something alive.

“ _She’s there_!” Astoria screamed, breaking the other witches’ false sense of security.

They all started firing curses in the direction of Euphemia’s body as she hoisted herself back on land and crawled on her belly towards them. Her tangled hair and writhing movements made her look like a sea serpent herself. She was entirely covered with the pages left from her grimoire, her face an ink- and blood-splattered _découpage_. The image of her was so frightening that Astoria lost the ability to strategise. Euphemia rose and moved closer, and there was nowhere to run, no good way to duel. Without any line of sight through the clinging, wet paper of her grimoire, Euphemia simply absorbed the curses, which became flowering sigils on her pages. If curses wouldn’t work, another type of spell would be the line between life and death…

“ _Cumulonimbus momentum_!” Astoria cast, because deep within, she remembered Professor Sinistra saying to _never_ use atmospheric magic on a person. But Euphemia didn’t seem very much like a person. She was a horror.

Astoria finally discovered why a license was needed to use atmospheric magic. All of the ink, blood, and water from Euphemia’s skin flung off in tiny droplets. Astoria could only imagine what was happening to the water content within Euphemia’s body.

Euphemia flung into the air, juddering as if she were a piece of dust in a glass vacuum, and then smacked hard against the rocky ground. Narcissa ran forward and held the cherry wand ready above the sea witch.

“Her neck has snapped,” said Narcissa, and she used the tip of the wand to tear the grimoire sheets from Euphemia’s dead face.

Astoria caved from the pressure of Professor Sinistra’s arms round her, and she buried her nose into her sleeve and cried, but she couldn’t feel her tears make any difference as the rain continued to pelt them. Would her life be normal after all this? Would she ever unsee it? Was she grown now, was she a witch? Was this war over, was there no more?

For good measure, Narcissa bound up the body tightly and followed by transfiguring it into a bone, which she handed off to Sinistra. Narcissa was the only one with enough wit left to get out of the rain, and she walked under the awning of the A-frame house. Astoria heard the door open behind them. Ahead, the sea and its haunts had gone quiet.

“Let’s go get the child,” Professor Sinistra said, wiping rain off of her face only for it to be covered with more.

They sloshed their way over to the house, where all of Euphemia’s magic had broken, and they met Narcissa in the entryway. She cast Hot-Air Charms upon them, and they were blown comfortably dry, though their hair fluffed out like Puffskein fur. The interior of the house was a bit strange, partially due to its owner and partially due to its triangular shape. The walls were a muted grey, with some artfully exposed wood. There was a large water clock in the centre of the living area, and a potted plant in a window, but otherwise no decorations. In fact, the living area only had plain wooden chairs with no cushions. It was more disturbed than an ascetic lifestyle; it seemed that Euphemia had wilfully deprived herself of normal articles of living in order to exacerbate her feelings of covetousness for the world and the people around her. She owned one pewter cauldron and one clay bowl. In fact, the only thing she seemed to have more than one of were unsavoury texts, sitting atop the table by the hearth.

In the back corner of the house, the source of the sound Astoria had heard earlier was singing a doleful song. It was a thin, black-green bird with a hunched back, rattling and gnawing its cage between cries. Its voice had an equal amount of timbre and emotion as a Doppelvanga’s, except its song was decidedly eerie and sad.

“That’s an Augurey,” Professor Sinistra mentioned. “I thought I heard one sing of rain earlier.”

Narcissa led them up the stairs, with her wand out for safety. The house naturally constricted into a smaller space at the top level, where Euphemia’s very plain bedroom held only a mattress, directly on the floor, and a closet, which was sure to be quite empty. There was a bathroom without plumbing, similar to the one in the cave where Astoria had spent her Easter holiday. Euphemia must have constantly conjured water from her wand for daily living. What a terrible place to grow up in. Astoria, having almost forgotten about the baby during her encounter with the demon at sea, was now viciously eager to meet the child and take her away to a new life.

When they opened the door to the makeshift nursery, they saw the figure of the infant Levitating above her cot, wriggling uncomfortably. Astoria had never Levitated out of her cot, and that was one of the many warning signs that she would not have what her parents believed to be “adequate” magic. Delphini was crying, but Euphemia must have Silenced her overnight. How cruel. Astoria hurried forward and gently took the child from the air and into her arms. She studied her sad, red face. Astoria was half-expecting an egg tooth to be on Delphini’s lip, so it was fantastic to see an absolutely normal infant. Yet even if Delphini hadn’t been “normal,” she deserved a normal life. Astoria cradled her closely, and soothingly rubbed her fuzzy, dark hair.

“Mrs Malfoy, please undo the spell on her,” Astoria said, since she would never point the silver lime wand at a baby, even though it belonged to her now.

Narcissa took the cherry and let the baby speak her pain, and it was a very loud and distressing noise, but Delphi had every right to let it be known. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and tears sneaked out of them. She was covered in snot and spit, which Astoria wiped with her sleeve. Like the other rooms, one wall was steeply slanted, and natural illumination came in through the skylight. This room had the most items, and it could not have been more obvious that they were all from Bellatrix. There were baby toys that Delphi had not yet grown into, a basket of tiny clothes, and a rocking chair that had little room to rock on account of the house’s shape. But Astoria sat in it and spoke comforting words to Delphi, who would have no idea what she was saying, but would perhaps by some chance enjoy a sound other than Euphemia’s voice. Delphini, though, was making another sound in the midst of her cries, and it was not a sound that came from babies, but one that came from angry cats or simmering cauldrons. Astoria was startled. Delphini was really hissing. Narcissa’s brow furrowed.

“The child will be a Parselmouth,” she said.

Astoria caressed Delphi’s tiny head as she held it in her hand. Both witches looked at her like Parseltongue was something Astoria ought to be upset about. However, she didn’t care about trivial things anymore after having survived that awful war.

“She will be able to communicate with snakes,” Professor Sinistra emphasised. “The language of Parseltongue, passed through the bloodline of Salazar Slytherin.”

“Mm, okay,” Astoria said.

She already knew about that. Rhiannon had told her long ago. Sure, a hissing baby wasn’t exactly the most pleasant thing, but Delphini couldn’t help it. That must have been why Voldemort kept a snake handy — no one else would listen to him as much.

“It’s not ‘okay,’” Narcissa spoke up. “Only those descended from Slytherin have this trait. The Dark Lord was his descendant. This child will be identifiable as another descendant, perhaps even identified as his daughter. She is an infant; it isn’t as though we can tell her to stop hissing.”

“Well, we weren’t going to put her in the orphanage anyway,” Astoria said.

“No, but we may not be able to convince Andromeda to take her now,” Professor Sinistra groaned, rubbing her forehead. “It was bad enough that Andromeda would know the child was Bellatrix’s, but this… well, now it’s obvious this isn’t Rodolphus’s daughter…”

Astoria looked at Delphi’s little red face again and wiped more of her tears and snot.

“She’s just a baby. There’s nothing evil about her. You both know that, or else we’d never have come here.”

“That’s true, but…” Narcissa fretted.

“Neither of you have talked to Mrs Tonks,” Astoria responded, “but if Mrs Tonks doesn’t want her, somebody in my family will.”

“ _Your_ family?” Narcissa responded, quite sourly considering all they had just endured together. “I highly doubt _your_ family would house a Parselmouth, innocent child or not.”

Astoria’s mouth twitched.

“Perhaps you’re right. In which case, I’d be happy to take her from Professor Sinistra’s care once I’m of age.”

 _All those gossips think I’d be her mother anyway_ , _and they don’t even know she exists_ , Astoria thought scathingly. But Delphini was a very real, very needy baby. Astoria didn’t even have her own parents back yet. Her life was anything but put together.

There had to be somebody out there who was capable of accepting Delphini for who she was and providing her with a good home. Astoria accepted the baby, but she had said the previous remark to Narcissa only to make a point. She knew she was incapable of being a mother anytime soon.

Delphini opened her eyes, hiccupping and hissing still. Her eyes were dark and wet and shiny. Astoria was completely enthralled with them, and her Legilimency was ever present for the helpless child. There was nothing of note in Delphi’s innocent mind except the need for food and the feeling of fright. Astoria was struck with emotion at the utter simplicity of the young life in her arms. Silly tears welled up.

“What’s wrong?” Narcissa asked nervously.

“Please, just… find the baby formula. There must be some somewhere, since it was Euphemia most of the time…”

Astoria moved her face away from the baby so that her tears would drip on the rocking chair instead. Professor Sinistra grabbed the soft blanket from the back of the chair and handed it to Astoria to help the wriggling Delphi get more comfortable.

“Do you recall how in _Legilimency in Practice_ , Gwendela said that in ancient times, witches were only trained to use it on babies?” Astoria chatted, sniffling.

“I remember that, yes,” Professor Sinistra responded.

“Well, I’m using it, and there’s… there’s just _nothing_ in this cute little head,” Astoria laughed. “She’s just scared and hungry, and looking around the room.”

Professor Sinistra looked down at the baby and smiled, too.

“Ah, well, she has no sense of self or anything,” Professor Sinistra said in amusement.

They weren’t laughing at the baby’s expense by any means. It was simply funny that they had _all_ begun that way — stupid and hungry and small. Narcissa came back with a heated bottle of formula; it must have been easy to find in a kitchen so sparse.

“She’s about to find out if she likes me or not,” Astoria grinned, and she fed the fussy baby. When Delphini looked at her, if only because she was something to look at, Astoria fell irretrievably in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Jonah said to [the fish], 'Behold, I have saved thee from the mouth of the Leviathan; show me what is in the sea and in the depths.'"_  
>  \- The Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer


	34. Tea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter comes with a musical rec, and my playlist is [located here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbEwOpb9udL8NQSwPCtzW_HAw_KqsKFy)
> 
> Chapter 34 - "The Seaside" by The Honey Trees

“What is _that_ tune?”

“Well, if you don’t sing funny songs to babies, they’ll turn out all wrong,” Astoria grinned, and she went back to singing an ad-libbed lullaby to Delphini. She had probably rhymed “eensy toes” with “weensy nose” three times now.

Fortunately, Delphi’s nose was _appropriately_ weensy, not altogether missing like her biological father’s Horcrux malformation. Delphi was sucking on her fist and intermittently amused with Astoria and Mrs Tonks’s various adorations of her. Teddy, Nymphadora and Lupin’s son, slept in the nursery. Delphini was two months older than Teddy, so she could bat at toys like a cat, and was admittedly the more interesting baby to hold. Teddy was practically a newborn — he interacted with the world by way of crying and Metamorphosing his hair. Both babies had a strong preference for being held skin-to-skin as opposed to long sleeves, cloaks, or robes, and Mrs Tonks was not judgmental of Astoria’s stained arm.

Astoria had spent the past week with Mrs Tonks, who had taken substantially less convincing to take in Delphi than Professor Sinistra had estimated. Bellatrix had murdered Nymphadora, and the best way for Bellatrix to roll in her grave was to raise Delphini to love humankind equally. That brought the total number of living persons who knew about Delphini’s parentage to four. Now that Nymphadora and Lupin’s widely-attended funeral was over, Mrs Tonks’s next plan was to register Delphini as her own daughter. Naturally, that might take some time, since the Ministry was not prioritising birth certificates for children born outside St Mungo’s during the war. But that would be the end of it; she would grow up as Delphini Megaera Tonks. Even Draco and Lucius wouldn’t know exactly what sort of morning Narcissa had had on that fateful day.

In her pathological need to avoid Andromeda, Narcissa had not been involved in the custody exchange. Rather, she had scurried home to Malfoy Manor to prepare some lies for the Ministry. Draco indicated to Astoria in a rather carefully-worded letter that his family had obtained legal counsel and were set to go to court on the upcoming Monday. Narcissa had given Astoria her cherry wand back, and Lucius would sell out the rest of the Death Eaters in exchange for a reduced (or even eliminated) sentence. Draco, of course, was not at risk of Azkaban. Astoria had a feeling he might be sentenced to community service, if he was sentenced at all.

“It’s going to rain again,” Mrs Tonks sighed.

The Augurey had started calling in its cage. Mrs Tonks opened the window so that the bird could go eat worms that would soon unearth. Mrs Tonks had requested the bird right off of Professor Sinistra’s shoulder when they had visited with the news about Delphi, apparently tired of the unpredictability of weather reports and saddened by her quiet house. Delphi always turned her head toward the sound of the bird’s call. It must have been her only decent stimulation when her biological mother hadn’t been at Rowle Ridge to dote on her.

In other bird-related news, Professor Sinistra had rented an internationally-trained owl from Diagon Alley’s post office for Astoria to try to send a letter to her parents. They were starting with two locations: the owlery at Beauxbatons and her maternal grandparents. If her parents weren’t actually there, perhaps the Ciel side of the family would know where the Greengrasses had escaped by now. At least now she could write to her grandparents since the mail was no longer frisked by Death Eaters. Though the owl had only recently left, Astoria waited for news every moment of every day.

This morning’s mail came without anything from France. It was too soon. Astoria gave all the mail to Mrs Tonks except for the letter with the “M” on the seal. Mrs Tonks knew about Astoria’s relationship with the nephew she had never met, not because Astoria had told her, but because the letters had come with every single round of post delivery. Narcissa must have let it out that Astoria was at the Tonks household, likely meaning for that information to discourage Draco. But why would it? Draco was no longer the person Narcissa and Lucius had tried to make him.

> _Dear Astoria,_
> 
> _First, allow me to apologise for all of the letters. Please let me know if I’m annoying you. I am admittedly nervous about my court date, and I can’t sleep unless I think of you. I hope everything is still going well where you are. Has Professor Sinistra got rid of the extra rooms in her house yet? The Ministry will be there soon to investigate, and I can only imagine what it must look like. By the way, were you serious about the Lupin baby having blue hair? Mother didn’t exactly want to talk about it, but she says Metamorphmagi crop up every so often on her side of the family. Does his face ever change, or is that something they can only do once they are older? How do you fancy I would look with green hair?_
> 
> _I would like for you to visit, so I’m trying to figure out when. It should probably be after my court date, or else that will be all I talk about. Please let me know when your family gets in touch with you. I would not want to take you away from them, either, but I miss you so much already. I feel so selfish, since I really do want you all to myself right now. I’d like everything to be out of the way so we can spend the summer together. If you have any ideas about where we should go, I’d like to hear them. From what I gathered, the Ministry hasn’t reinstituted the ban on underage magic yet, so you should be able to travel if you want to. I think they are waiting until there is some crisis relief in place, since there are a lot of displaced families._
> 
> _Yesterday, I received mail about the N.E.W.T.s of all things. They’ve been postponed to July. Apparently, Theodore and I and anyone else in my year can choose to take them or to retake seventh year. There is also the option of accelerated curriculum for students whose academics were disrupted. That would include the Muggle-borns. If Rhiannon or your cousins have not been in school, perhaps they’d like to take advantage of that when they come back. Anyway, I’m going to take my N.E.W.T.s as it stands. I don’t want to go back to Hogwarts at all. They might not even let me anyway depending on my hearing. Will you take your Astronomy N.E.W.T.? I feel like that class wasn’t disrupted, even though it was cut short. Let me know if you would like to study together. Will you be upset if we don’t always study? (Ha-ha)._
> 
> _Yours,_
> 
> _Draco_

Astoria was reading and re-reading the letter so intently that she did not see Mrs Tonks waving another letter in her face.

“I was seeing how long it would for you to notice take if I didn’t say anything aloud,” Mrs Tonks said slickly. “You’ve another letter from another boy that you accidentally gave to me. What would your mother say, dear?”

Astoria shook her head, spotting the return address on the envelope.

“It’s not — it’s my friend, Theodore.”

Mrs Tonks teased her, “ _My_ friend Ted and I got married.”

“No, really, he’s my friend,” Astoria smiled. “By the way, thank you for letting my mail come here.”

“Of course, dear. Thank you for staying with me during this,” Mrs Tonks said and handed her the letter.

> _Guess what, Astoria. I went to get Dad today at the Muggle old folks’ home. He’s got no idea he’s the reason the lights flicker when he snores or why the television gets fuzzy when he walks into the room. The nurse I talked to said she thought he had a “very strong pace-maker” or “big piece of shrapnel” in him that made the electronics strange, but the doctor couldn’t find anything. I didn’t know what to say, so I just agreed with what she said! Dad’s totally Obliviated, so he plays the role of a demented Muggle very well. Is that politically incorrect? I’m sorry._
> 
> _Long story short, I’m going to leave him there for now, but I might leave him there for good! He was the happiest I’ve ever seen him. He’s made a bunch of friends, actually, and they play board games and complain about newspapers getting thinner. He can’t watch the television with them all the time, but sometimes his magic must not be as bubbly, and he can join in. He says his favourite programme is_ Last of the Summer Wine _, and he was very upset that I was interrupting it, because usually it is “all static” when he most wants to see it. I know this is a lot to ask, but would you come see him with me sometimes? He keeps bothering me about you. Besides, I want to show you a television programme called_ Red Dwarf _because it seems like the Muggles grossly misunderstand space travel(?)_
> 
> _Anyway, I think this is probably the best retirement Dad ever could have imagined, if you know what I mean. If I bring him back, he’ll have to go to court and all, just so they can see exactly how muddled his brain is. It’s not like he can testify, and I don’t want him sent to St Mungo’s or St Oswald’s. People will know who he is there, and he won’t have anybody to talk to. Am I going mad? I think leaving him with Muggles is the right thing to do, after all!_
> 
> _Theodore_

Astoria had to keep herself from laughing at the irony of an ex-Death Eater spending his elder years happily amongst Muggles. She didn’t exactly like it, but the old codger couldn’t be brought to justice in his mental state, and this was Theodore’s first chance to start living in peace. Astoria hated to borrow parchment from Mrs Tonks, but the witch said she was making a big deal of nothing and always gave her supplies to reply to letters.

Mrs Tonks had mounds of sympathy cards that she left unopened, since it was far too much to deal with on top of the tragedies themselves. However, she did open a letter from Lyall Lupin. Lyall, who had had to flee his job at the Ministry once it fell to Death Eaters, wrote that he was once again employed in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. He intended to support Andromeda financially rather than retire, and he asked if it would be intrusive if he were to stop by each day after work to spend time with his grandson.

“What a shy, silly man,” Mrs Tonks said. “We’re family; of course he can stop by! I’m putting him to work with Teddy. I need all the help I can get.”

She paused, and looked from the letter to Astoria.

“He might hear Delphini hiss whenever she cries. He is more than familiar with the concept of Parseltongue,” Mrs Tonks said.

Astoria bit her lip. Like Narcissa had said, it was too bad they couldn’t tell Delphi to stop. There wasn’t any ethical way to stop the sound from coming out.

“Forgive me, but I’ve never met Mr Lupin, so I’m not sure how he would take the truth,” uttered Astoria.

Mrs Tonks tapped a finger to her lips.

“Well, he is more than capable of keeping secrets. He concealed Remus’s condition with extreme prudence. There is no point in keeping something from him that he will be able to figure out. I will simply say that she inherited it from the Rosiers in France, but that we aren’t to speak of it in case people ‘get the wrong idea.’”

Astoria nodded assent. She wished it didn’t have to be this way. Mrs Tonks opened another letter.

“It’s from Harry,” she said.

“Oh.”

Mrs Tonks eyes traced the letter, and she said, “He would like to come over tomorrow to see Teddy.”

“Oh.”

Astoria realised she was biting her nails. Literally every time Delphi cried, she made that terrible hiss. It was as natural for her as breathing. Astoria thought she might take the baby to Professor Sinistra’s during Harry Potter’s visit. One day, they _would_ be able to tell Delphi to refrain from doing that. The problem was they would have to give Delphi some reason as to why they wanted her to stop, and that no, it didn’t make her bad, but some people would be rude… _Oh, here it goes again_. People hating other people for something they couldn’t help. Astoria wanted to keep Delphi away from all that nonsense. Her own parents had tried _too_ hard to do that for her, but was there any happy medium?

“I can take Delphi to—”

“Delphi is my daughter, and this is Delphi’s home,” Mrs Tonks said, running a hand through her hair. “We have no guarantee that she’ll hiss-cry or hiss-coo or anything whilst Harry is here. If she starts getting fussy, just take her to the nursery and Quieten her voice. We won’t leave her that way. You think I never Quietened my Nymphadora when she was wailing into my ear at four in the morning? It’s not the same as a Silencing Charm… that’s what bad parents do.”

Mrs Tonks sat the letter aside and got some parchment to reply to Harry.

“Harry will be bringing his girlfriend. She was friends with Nymphadora.”

“Yes, I, er,” Astoria started awkwardly, “I, er, know Ginny, actually.”

“Oh, that’s very nice,” Mrs Tonks said, probably happy to hear that Astoria actually had some friends who weren’t related to Death Eaters.

 _What is Ginny going to say when I carry a hissing baby out of the room_? Astoria worried. _Surely she won’t start believing those rumours about me_.

Well, what did it matter anymore? Astoria herself was waiting to be called in to testify — she had been at least indirectly involved with the deaths of so many Death Eaters that she could hold her own against that rumour. If Ginny wanted to think Delphi was Astoria’s daughter with Time-Warp-Tom, then maybe their friendship hadn’t developed as well as Astoria might have secretly hoped.

“I wanted to bring something up, actually,” Mrs Tonks said, as if she knew that she was interrupting Astoria’s swim in the anxiety pool.

“Oh. Yes?”

“Harry Potter was named the godfather of little Teddy. Remus had a chance to ask him himself. So he’ll be there at the Christening, whenever we have time to do that.”

“Oh, yes,” Astoria said, still awkward and anxious.

“Of course, some godparental traditions don’t make sense here. Obviously, he’s far too young to have taken Teddy in, and I wouldn’t have allowed it anyway. There is also the fact that Harry isn’t involved with the godmothers Dora and Remus chose.”

Astoria stared at her blankly.

“They did not have a chance to ask your friend Rhiannon Clarke, who I understand stayed with your family. That was their wish. They wanted her to be at the Christening and to meet the baby. They didn’t mean for any real responsibility to befall Harry and Rhiannon. I was simply wondering, when Rhiannon returns, if you think she would be interested in such a thing.”

Astoria again stared blankly, this time managing to open her mouth. Rhiannon Clarke, her best friend in the world, flooded her head again. Rhiannon hadn’t even been able to attend Professor Lupin’s funeral. Would being named a godparent make her feel better or worse? Rhiannon didn’t know her professor was deceased or that Teddy existed. What to do, what to do?

“I… Well, Rhiannon isn’t Wizarding Christian or anything,” Astoria stated, recalling how uncomfortable and bored Rhiannon had been when she came to church with the Greengrasses. Rhiannon also didn’t like anything ceremonial. Rhiannon probably also didn’t like the smells, sounds, or various waste-producing aspects of babies. But Rhiannon loved Professor Lupin, regardless of the times he had been absent out of necessity, because he was never emotionally absent. In fact, Rhiannon would heartily say that Professor Lupin would have been an excellent father to his son. She viewed him that way. She had no blood family.

“Rhiannon will do it, yeah,” Astoria said slowly, and then more surely, “Yes, she’d love to know that… that they had thought of her. She’d love to. I’ll tell her once she comes back.”

There were tears in Mrs Tonks’s eyes.

“Thank you. Yes, let me know. I know that’s what they wanted. I’m just trying to do the things they’d talked about…”

Astoria got up from her seat and gave Mrs Tonks a supportive hug because there was nothing to say. Mrs Tonks was thankfully a hugger, since that was Astoria’s favourite method of communication. She cried for a very long time. Everyone was gone. Astoria was glad to be there for her, even if she wasn’t Mrs Tonks’s most ideal form of support. Astoria’s mother would be at Mrs Tonks’s side, too, whenever she got back from exile. It would work out.

Teddy cried at five in the morning, and it was Astoria’s self-proclaimed turn to get up. She would rather wake to babies crying than to her grisly nightmares, anyway. She hurried into the room before Mrs Tonks’s sleep would be disturbed and made the nursery Imperturbable. Delphini heard Teddy and started crying only moments later, so Astoria was doing her best to soothe two babies. If they were just a titbit closer in age, she’d be able to hold them both in a rocking chair, but they were at surprisingly different developmental stages and needed to be held and consoled differently. Teddy needed swaddled. Delphi needed support, but she kicked everywhere and liked to hold things. Astoria set them in the same cot, side by side, and stroked their cheeks and sang whilst she waited for Teddy’s bottle to heat. Like Draco had said, underage magic wasn’t forbidden again yet, but if it were, she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to tell the Ministry how things were going to be in the Tonks household. That bottle needed heated _now_.

She lifted Teddy into her arms and fed him once it was ready, and she charmed soft, pretty lights over Delphi’s head for her to look at. By the time everyone was quiet, she had to change both of their nappies anyway. Teddy went to sleep shortly after, but Delphi was _wide awake_. Sheesh. Ashwinder snakes were independent the moment they hatched; why couldn’t human infants take a few hints?

“Delphi, Delphi, I’m so tired,” Astoria sang gently as she rocked her gently her arms. “Delphi, Delphi, you’re too fired…”

Her overnight baby songs would have been huge hits for Pariah, right? After a long time of trying to soothe Delphi unsuccessfully, she then tried to stimulate Delphi enough so she would get cranky again and go to sleep. That didn’t work, either. Astoria stood by the window with the baby and looked at the sky.

“No Delphinus from here,” Astoria said. “When you’re old enough, I’ll show you that constellation. I’ll show you all of them until you’re bored with me and stop thinking I’m cool.”

Delphi fussed a little and hissed, so Astoria tried feeding her.

“I wish you made dolphin noises instead of snake noises, Delphi.”

Astoria’s tired brain pondered the eons of negative symbolism associated with snakes simply because some of them had venom. Snakes had received a bad reputation long before Salazar Slytherin and his racist arse came to Hogwarts. But dolphins were peaceful creatures, though their calls were pretty intense.

“Okay, I take it back. Dolphin noises would be worse than baby squeals and hisses,” Astoria said. “You’d be so loud, hmm? You’d be even louder than you are now.”

Delphi had the crummy vision of any baby her age, so when anything came right to her face, she got excited and her eyes followed it. This was a very nice feeling when it happened to be Astoria’s face that she followed.

“‘Eee eee eee,’ that’s a dolphin noise,” Astoria giggled. “You go ‘sss sss sss.’ Maybe we can tell people you have a combination of asthma and a lisp when you get older.”

Delphi wriggled some more and curled her tiny hands. Astoria gave her her finger to squeeze. Delphi was very strong.

“No, okay, we won’t say that. You can speak however you like. Astoria will be here to tell everyone to mind their own business, right? Yes she will, absolutely.”

Delphi made a small burp.

“Yes, absolutely,” Astoria replied. “What a wonderful baby you are. Yes, you. Yes, you!”

Delphini was the only good idea that bitch Bellatrix had ever had. Her baby face was a wonderful distraction from all of Astoria’s intrusive thoughts.

“I’m gonna need therapy, hm? Yes, I will, and I’ll tell that therapist that at least taking care of you is nice. I wish you’d sleep, though. Will you sleep for Astoria?”

Delphi squirmed all over, which was her own way of indicating “no.”

“Let’s make breakfast for your mummy, okay? Neither of us are going to sleep. Do you want to help me make breakfast?”

Astoria set Delphi in the bouncy seat they had taken from Rowle Ridge. Delphi didn’t have the motor skills or strength to bounce yet, but it helped her sit up. Astoria could only imagine the use she’d make of that thing once she figured out it bounced. They’d probably have to buckle her in so she wouldn’t launch herself through the ceiling with magic.

“You are so helpful. You’re doing a great job,” Astoria told Delphi as Delphi did utterly nothing and Astoria scrambled eggs.

Astoria was criminally unskilled at cooking. House-elves had done everything her whole life until this war, but Astoria didn’t want to be a useless member of the household, and she worked with the ingredients Mrs Tonks had. She was pretty tired of the full English, but she would never fail to appreciate that Mrs Tonks was housing her. Astoria wanted the light, sweet morning flavours of her mother’s breakfast: croissants, strawberries, and some toast with hazelnut spread. Mrs Tonks had a French mother like Astoria, but they obviously had never been close. Mrs Tonks had the language, but not the culture.

“Oh, c’est vrai! Je devrais te parler français, Delphi,” Astoria said to the baby, who was tapping her fists on the edge of the bouncy seat. Astoria intended to be round Delphi and Teddy a lot, so maybe she could pass on the language to them. That would make Teddy bilingual and Delphi trilingual, if Parseltongue counted for anything. Maybe Mrs Tonks wouldn’t be against speaking French to the babies, either. Children learned languages best with early exposure.

“Les serpents peuvent-ils parler français s’ils essaient?” she joked.

Breakfast was ready long before Mrs Tonks was awake, so Astoria preserved it all for later. Delphini was finally willing to go back to sleep, so Astoria took her to the nursery. Astoria fell back to sleep in the rocking chair. This was difficult business, this baby stuff. When Astoria woke again in late morning, Teddy was floating out of his cot. She carefully reached to cradle him and walked quietly into the kitchen. Mrs Tonks had set the table.

“Thank you so much for making food,” she said.

“Oh, of course.”

“Was he fussing?”

“Not really, just floating,” Astoria said, rubbing her eyes.

“His mummy was an extreme floater,” Mrs Tonks said nostalgically. “And I heard that his dad was a _spinner_.”

“Don’t say that too loudly, Mrs Tonks, or he’ll get ideas.”

 _I didn’t show any infant magic_ , Astoria thought as she picked at her sausage. _Babies are difficult enough without magic_. _They might have thought I was a Squib, but I bet I was a relief after Daphne_ ’ _s antics_.

“How early were you up?” Mrs Tonks asked.

“Oh, eight or something,” Astoria lied casually.

“I’m glad you got some more sleep. You don’t have to do so much, dear. I’ll ask for things I need help with. You know, I’ve done this before,” Mrs Tonks said warmly.

“Well, I…”

Astoria shoved her hair out of her face.

 _I’d like to have my own someday_.

Delphi suddenly started wailing unbearably.

 _Not for a long time, though_.

Harry and Ginny arrived for tea that afternoon. They were both dressed more nicely than Astoria had typically seen them. They stood awkwardly in the doorway, like they didn’t know if they were a reminder of what had happened in the war. The truth was that everything was a reminder to Mrs Tonks. Her daughter died. They didn’t _add_ to it like they feared.

“Thank you for having us,” Harry said to Mrs Tonks, and he handed her a large covered platter of food from Hogwarts for later.

“Thank you for coming. Thank you for everything,” said Mrs Tonks sincerely. “Oh, you didn’t have to, thank you.”

Astoria remained in the background. Mostly everything was set up for tea, so Astoria brought out the food and the beverage of honour, which was a simple black tea. She hoped that the apparent saviour of modern Britain was content with sandwiches, scones, and clotted cream.

“ _Astoria_?” Ginny said as she entered the dining room.

“Me again. How are you?” Astoria said politely.

Harry walked in behind, patted along by Mrs Tonks. He probably had zero recollection of who Astoria was, which was likely for the best.

“Hello,” he said awkwardly.

“Hello,” she said. “I’ll get jam, too, if anyone wants it.”

Astoria felt fine as long as she was busy. If she started talking to Ginny about _anything_ that had transpired, she knew she’d get embarrassingly teary. And Harry didn’t think anything of anything, but Astoria was dying to ask him about Horcruxes, and if Draco might have his wand back.

“Teddy happens to be asleep right now, but he’s sure to wake so you can both meet him,” Mrs Tonks said with a smile.

Harry was thrilled and said, “Lupin told us his hair’s already changing colours.”

“Yes, yes, his tufts of hair have been blue, pink, black, green, and yellow. I think he can pick up on what colour shirt people are wearing. But his favourite by far is blue, probably because the nursery is done in blue and green,” Mrs Tonks said as a proud grandmother.

Astoria had already set a Quietening Charm on Delphi as a precaution, so her ears were constantly listening for any light sounds of disturbance. She would still be able to hear her voice; the hisses just would go under the notice of the guests. She spread clotted cream on her scone and added sugar cubes to her tea. She was usually socially skilled, but she couldn’t seem to speak. Astoria realised she had added too much sugar.

“We have another little one… a surprise,” Mrs Tonks smiled.

Ginny and Harry looked on with great interest, unsure of how to ask for more detail.

“Ted and I realised she was on the way before Nymphadora announced her own pregnancy, and… well, we didn’t want to take away from Dora’s special moment or make her feel like she was being replaced! We waited to bring it up. I have to be perfectly honest, she was our happy accident. Of course, Ted never got to meet her, but…” Mrs Tonks said, wiping a tear, “she’s in the nursery with Teddy. Her name is Delphini. Now that the war’s over, I can get her a birth record. She’s two months old, and little Teddy isn’t even a month yet. It will be nice that they can grow up together.”

“Wow! Congratulations, Mrs Tonks!” Ginny said. “That’s wonderful!”

“Yes, congratulations!” Harry said. “Your, er, hands must be full!”

“Well, Astoria has been an incredible help,” Mrs Tonks chuckled. “I’m good friends with her mother, who has been in hiding, but she’s sure to get the news soon. Do either of you know Remus’s father? He’ll be helping out as well.”

Ginny and Harry looked at each other, and Harry said, “We’ve actually never met him before. That’s good.”

“Lyall’s shy and awkward, so he might not know what to say when you eventually meet,” reamarked Mrs Tonks.

 _Like me_ , thought Astoria.

“Ah, wait a minute,” Harry said to himself, tapping his forehead. He looked at Astoria as though he figured out how she had arrived on this planet. “You were in that band. With Rhiannon Clarke.”

“Yes. And you… oh let me think… oh, right, you were Harry Potter,” Astoria joked.

Harry gave her a vacant look, and then a rather large smile crept up on him.

“I knew I knew you. I’ve seen you round,” he nodded.

“Currently, I’m waiting to hear back from Rhiannon,” she said.

“Yeah, that’ll be great when she finds out,” Harry said.

After that, the other three did most of the talking. Astoria cleared the table and sent the dishes to the sink. Delphi cried on cue as soon as she heard the dishes rattle, and it woke Teddy, who started crying, too. Astoria hurried so that Delphi would not give herself away. She scooped her up in her arms and then readjusted her hold so she could caress Teddy’s face until more help arrived.

“Shh, shh,” she said to Teddy.

“Sshh sshh,” Delphi mimicked.

“No, no,” Astoria laughed. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“Sshh sshh!” Delphi said before shedding more tears again.

Delphi was only fussing because she had been awakened, but Teddy seemed genuinely uncomfortable. The other three filed in, and Astoria clandestinely lowered Delphi’s voice even more. Mrs Tonks took her into her arms, but Teddy was now wailing. Astoria resorted to Legilimency to try to figure out what was wrong, and it turned out a temperature increase in the room had made Teddy feel a little on the warm side. Astoria removed his sleepsuit to help him cool down. Ginny and Harry stood in the doorway, unsure of how to help. There wasn’t much to be done beyond the usual. They were very young babies. Once Mrs Tonks and Astoria got them settled, they were ready for the visitors.

“Here, sit down, and you can hold him,” Mrs Tonks said to Harry, and once he sat, he looked terrified.

“He doesn’t bite,” Astoria said, and handed him the baby.

Harry took the joke too seriously.

“Lupin said he hasn’t got any signs of lycanthropy,” he said, affronted.

Astoria inhaled, “That’s not what I meant.”

“You just looked afraid to hold him, Harry,” Ginny smiled, and she made lots of faces at Teddy whilst Harry cradled him.

Mrs Tonks was smooching Delphi above the ear.

“Would you like to hold Delphini, Ginny?” Mrs Tonks asked. “She’s squirmier.”

“Aw, that’s fine. Are you a squirmy baby?” Ginny cooed, and took Delphi in her arms. “Oh, whoa, Mrs Tonks, she looks _just_ like you!”

Mrs Tonks grinned trickily at Astoria, and then said to Ginny, “Thank you, dear.”

“How cute you are!” Ginny said to the baby. “Are you gonna be a good big sissy to Teddy?”

“Well, wouldn’t she be his aunt, since she’s Mrs Tonks’s?” Harry teased Ginny.

“Oh, they’re babies, Harry, they don’t know what I’m saying.”

Biologically, the two babies were first cousins once removed, but it was all irrelevant. They would essentially grow up as siblings, and Delphi would never have to know about Rowle Ridge or Bellatrix.

“I’m going to be the wildest godfather to you, Teddy,” Harry joked as Teddy grasped his finger. “I’ll take you for broom rides, since I don’t have a motorcycle yet.”

“Oh, that Sirius…” Mrs Tonks rolled her eyes.

Delphi started to squirm beyond Ginny’s comfort, so Astoria took her and set her in the cot. Harry offered Ginny Teddy to hold, and they carefully exchanged him. Teddy slept most of the time, but with all the visitors, he was quite aware and active.

“Oh. He’s trying to eat my boob,” Ginny laughed. “There’s nothing here for you. Nope, sorry!”

“Would you like to give him his bottle, Ginny?” Mrs Tonks asked. “It’s about time for them to eat anyway.”

“Oh, yes, if that’s all right,” Ginny said.

Mrs Tonks got the bottles and fed Delphini whilst Ginny fed Teddy. Ginny kept saying “They’re so cute” because, really, they were. Harry and Ginny told Mrs Tonks that there were dozens of Weasleys waiting to see Teddy.

“When is the Christening? Maybe they could all see him at once then,” Ginny suggested.

“We’re waiting for Rhiannon to get back, and then we’ll have them both Christened,” Mrs Tonks said. “Rhiannon was to be a godmother.”

“Well, send an owl when you know, and we’ll all be there,” Ginny said.

Mrs Tonks encouraged Ginny and Harry to stay the afternoon if they weren’t too busy, and though they likely had many people to visit, they agreed to stay. Ginny was admiring the Augurey and jingling its bell and mirror toy.

“Does she have a name?” Ginny asked.

“No, but you can name it, Ginny,” Mrs Tonks said.

“Hmm. How’s Mizzle?” Ginny suggested.

“You’re about as good at naming pets as I am. My owl’s name is Twinkles,” Astoria said.

“Don’t poke fun!” Ginny said. “She likes the rain, right? Aren’t I clever?”

“Sure, sure,” Astoria said. “Mizzle it is.”

“Do the babies cry when she calls for rain?” Ginny wondered.

“Delphi never does. Teddy has before, but only if it wakes him up,” Astoria said as she gave the bird a snack.

Mrs Tonks and Harry went and sat in the other room, where they reminisced about Tonks and Lupin with bittersweet tears. Astoria and Ginny kept doting on Mizzle, who sometimes got the short end of the stick with two cute babies in the house.

“So, erm…” Ginny said.

Astoria looked at her, but Ginny didn’t continue without pressing, “Yes?”

“Are you and Malfoy still…? Because Harry has this extra wand he doesn’t want, and it was Malfoy’s, and I thought maybe you could take it if…”

“I certainly can,” Astoria said proudly.

“All right, I’ll tell him in a bit. And go easy when you Disarm my boyfriend, please,” Ginny said, elbowing her.

“I’ll go easy. If he ends up getting knocked off his feet and out to the garden, it’s his own fault,” Astoria smirked.

She realised that the unkempt vegetable patch outside needed watered. She stepped outside with Ginny.

“I’d like to get the vegetable patch nice for her again. Something small to raise her spirits a bit,” Astoria said. “I got poor marks in Herbology, though.”

“Oh, that’s no big deal! Let’s pull the weeds first.”

Ginny and Astoria ended up soiling their shoes in the garden, but they were mostly able to use wands. Something that Astoria thought would take days went by quickly with Ginny’s help and advice. Astoria saw her opportunity to ask about the H-word in the quiet, sunny afternoon, and took it.

“Harry said some really strange things when he confronted Tom Riddle. Things about Draco and Snape and Horcruxes. Was all of that real?” she conversed with affected ease.

“Oh, yeah, it was,” Ginny said. “He’s been trying to catch me up, you know… he went out into the woods for so long, and we didn’t get to talk. So I only understand about half of what he says, but he feels better when he talks.”

“That’s good that you’re there for him,” Astoria said. “I can’t believe there was more than one Tom Riddle.”

She had added the last bit deliberately erroneously so that Ginny would correct her and give her more information. The bait worked.

“Well, there wasn’t more than one of _him_. There were multiple Horcruxes, I guess bits of his soul that needed destroyed. That’s how he came back to life the first time. I didn’t fully understand it, but a long time ago, I came into contact with one of those Horcruxes.”

“Oh my goodness, Ginny. Are you okay?” Astoria asked sincerely.

“Oh, yeah, that was ages ago. That was the whole Chamber of Secrets thing. It was round that time when… er, a basilisk attacked Muggle-borns.”

“I’m sorry, Ginny. That must have been terrible.”

“Yeah, but that was actually the first Horcrux Harry got to destroy. He used basilisk venom,” she said. “So it all worked out.”

Astoria carefully replied, “Oh. I heard that basilisk venom is the only way to get rid of something so horrible, so it’s a good thing he had that available.”

“Yeah, definitely. I guess it wasn’t the only way, but it was the safest way. You know that spell you used out on the grounds? The grass won’t grow there again. That’s a Horcrux killer, too,” Ginny said as she Vanished the pile of weeds.

“Fiendfyre?” Astoria uttered, and had to forcibly contain herself. She didn’t want to raise Ginny’s alarm in the slightest, since that could go horribly wrong. “That makes sense. That was a terribly harsh spell. I only cast it to save us.”

“Oh, I know that. Believe it or not, I trust you, Astoria,” Ginny said. “It’s a good thing you used it, too. There had to have been hundreds of people trying to kill us. What a year, right?”

“Oh, yes.”

That was all the information Astoria needed, so she let the subject change, and Ginny’s suspicion was never aggravated. Nobody needed to know about the Horcrux at Quennell Park except Astoria. She wanted to make it so that nobody would ever need to know again.

“Astoria… are you all right?”

Astoria shook out the heavy thoughts. She studied Ginny’s friendly features.

“Oh, I’m fine. I guess I wear all of my emotions,” Astoria said. “You don’t do that at all. You’re really tough, actually.”

Ginny flushed under her freckles.

“I think sometimes it’s good to let it out, though,” Astoria said gently. “I want to know how _you_ ’ _ve_ been doing.”

Ginny scrunched her face up tightly. She looked back through the kitchen to make sure Mrs Tonks and Harry were still occupied with their own conversation.

“I want to be strong for Harry,” Ginny said with a sad little laugh. “He’s been through so, so much, and he’s honestly a sensitive person. I just want to be his rock, you know? Someone he can count on.”

“That’s kind of you, Ginny, but you need support, too,” Astoria reminded.

Ginny folded her hands, clasped them tighter, and refolded them, like she didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t used to talking. Astoria conjured a blanket, and they sat on the lawn.

“Well,” Ginny said, “Can I tell you about Fred?”

“Yes, certainly,” Astoria said.

So Ginny did.


End file.
